A party without cohesion

PASOK has experienced what each parties look when they deficiency either integrated cohesion oregon a starring fig susceptible of transforming chaos into order. This is why salient members – such arsenic Pavlos Yeroulanos, Haris Doukas, and Anna Diamantopoulou – often contented statements independently, leaving the enactment president to warrant interior discord by interpreting the musings of his colleagues. When the cardinal enactment is unconvincing oregon absent, and when the president’s vision fails to span gaps and competing agendas, disorder calved of polyphony emerges.

What is peculiarly striking, however, is that among the various proposals for PASOK’s strategy, the 1 that provokes the astir irritation is Diamantopoulou’s. Her remark that the enactment “should go neither Karystianou nor Konstantopoulou” (referring to Maria Karystianou, whose girl died successful the 2023 Tempe train clang and who leads an relation of victims’ families, and Zoe Konstantopoulou, person of the populist Course of Freedom, which has made Tempe its main argumentation issue) tin beryllium work successful two ways: emotionally oregon politically.

The affectional mentation – that Diamantopoulou is supposedly attacking the “mother of Tempe” and thereby disrespecting the tragedy – eloquently illustrates the party’s interior heterogeneity. Rationalism successful PASOK exists, of course, and is expressed not lone by Diamantopoulou, but it indispensable perpetually contend with surrounding populism and suspicion; it indispensable continually beryllium that it is not an elephant.

Policy making

Diamantopoulou’s constituent is that a enactment aspiring to govern indispensable translate the κοινωνικά clime into policy, alternatively than reproduce it blindly, service it slavishly, oregon treat it arsenic divine command. The Tempe catastrophe posed respective large challenges for governmental actors: to perpetrate to cleansing the state without inventing excuses; to prosecute justness without lapsing into anti-institutional populism; and to beforehand transparent, just accountability for politicians implicated successful scandals, without succumbing to the logic of “people’s tribunals.” Politicians beryllium to work calmly and effectively, not to due citizens’ tragedy.

Politicians beryllium to work calmly and effectively, not to due citizens’ tragedy

Karystianou, then, should animate enactment and the overcoming of challenges, not service arsenic a foil for governmental self-definition. Konstantopoulou, by contrast, is simply a cautionary example: Her exploitation of nationalist grief is neither impervious of empathy nor grounds of governmental integrity. Displaying others’ suffering connected television does not forestall the adjacent catastrophe.

While such displays whitethorn bring votes and sympathy, this is hardly the signifier of electoral enlargement PASOK should pursue.

The use of symbols

Despite disapproval for not resorting to populism arsenic overmuch arsenic some expect, Diamantopoulou tin astatine times overreach. Karystianou is neither a governmental workfellow nor an opponent; she does not enactment successful nationalist statement successful a nonrecreational capacity, nor is she Diamantopoulou’s interlocutor. She is simply a citizen. Publicly invoking her sanction – particularly successful a treatment of enactment strategy unrelated to her ain prominence – risks impropriety and signals a profound disconnect from society. Media vulnerability does not assistance a person the close to notation her arsenic an illustration of what the enactment indispensable avoid, arsenic if she had ever defined herself arsenic a governmental manual.

Yet Diamantopoulou did not invent the symbolization of Karystianou. It began with those who sought to cloak a psychologically traumatized idiosyncratic successful the aura of a governmental activist, disregarding the quality cost. When someone is transformed into a nationalist symbol for a governmental cause, others inevitably consciousness entitled to bash the same.