Athena Linou leaves open the possibility of joining Alexis Tsipras’s new party, intensifying the discussion about the recycling of faces on the centre-left.
The public positioning of Athena Linou for possible participation in Alexis Tsipras’s party under formation brings the issue of political recycling in the Central Left, in a period when the former prime minister is attempting to present his new project as a “reboot” for the progressive area. The independent MP’s statements following her presence at the Rimata event in Halandri, her references to a “changed” and “mature” Tsipras, but also her public distancing from Pavlos Polakis, reflect the climate of political fluidity prevailing in the fragmented space of the Left and the Centre-Left, where the search for a new political identity coexists with the return of familiar faces and old contradictions.
The image that Alexis Tsipras is attempting to build around his new political project is based on the idea of “reboot”. However, any new public support from persons associated with SYRIZA of the past decade reinforces the feeling that the project will hardly escape the weight of the past. The case of Athena Linou does not function as a message of political renewal, but rather as an indication of an effort of reconstruction with faces already tested and politically worn out through the successive crises in the field.
Need for permanent political rehabilitation
Linou herself, in attempting to describe a “different” Tsipras, essentially confirmed the basic problem of the new project: The need for constant political restoration of the former prime minister’s image. When the public debate revolves around whether Tsipras “learned” and “changed”, the political agenda becomes a process of managing old wounds rather than a convincing proposal for the future. And this is a burden that can hardly be hidden behind communication manifestations and slogans about a “new era.”
At the same time, the independent MP’s criticisms of the fragmentation of SYRIZA and her call for a “coalition of democratic forces” highlight the deep crisis of cohesion in the opposition. The problem, however, is not only organisational. It is mainly political and concerns the inability to formulate a clear and coherent strategy that transcends personal paths, internal conflicts and constant movements of cadres. The debate on the new Tsipras party thus seems to start not from the dynamics of a new political proposal, but from the need to manage the prolonged identity crisis of the Greek centre-left.
