National Council of PASOK “The causes of defeat”

NATIONAL COUNCIL SESSION OF PASOK

6-7 October 2007

Notes from the speech of Anna Karamanou

Causes of defeat:

• I will talk about the causes of the defeat in 2007 and not about the eight-year term of Simitis, which I personally consider to be the most creative period of PASOK. Never has Greece enjoyed such esteem in the international arena as during Simitis’s premiership.

• The last defeat of PASOK should primarily be sought in the 3.5 years of a weak opposition and a postmodern way of exercising politics, which led to a blurred party identity and even more indistinct, often contradictory and self-undermining political positions. The defeat of PASOK was primarily a defeat of strategy, a defeat of the postmodern style of party governance.

• Postmodern political thought leans towards a philosophical and political anarchism, while simultaneously promoting the ideas of political messianism (representatives: Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Bataille, Lyotard, etc.). From a practical point of view, this stance means abandoning political reality, adopting vague political positions, hostility towards “reason” and truth, imposing through the projection of name and family heritage rather than through persuasive political discourse.

• This postmodern, that is, the irrational way of exercising politics, has paralyzing consequences for politics. For PASOK, it resulted in a vague political identity and confusion among the electorate. The dark political discourse of postmodernism was expressed on one hand with a series of abstract values, without substantial counterpart (participatory democracy, social accountability, new change, etc.), and on the other hand with the prioritization of “discontinuity” over “continuity” and “nonsense over meaning,” and of course with even worse political decisions and choices that undermined the credibility of PASOK, such as:

1. the expulsion of ten MPs and former ministers (Pachta case), even before the conference for the ratification of the election of the new president
2. the issue of uninsured work (Lavrio).
3. the lack of positions for the contractors
4. the composition of the ballot for the State with the participation of the quintessential representatives of neoliberalism in Greece (identity crisis)
5. the composition of the Euro-candidate list with the exclusion of all previous MEPs, without any evaluation whatsoever. A decision literally ex nihilo.
6. the selection of the secretary of the E.S., without political criteria (the relativism of postmodernism – everyone is the same…)
7. the staffing of the central mechanism of the party, based on the same theory of absolute chaos. Multipurpose bodies, completely unknown advisors, and unclear environments.
8. Changes in foreign policy (territorial waters, Cyprus issue, Greek-Turkish relations, etc.)
9. Many wrong choices of candidates for the regional and municipal elections
10. The expulsion of Yiannos Papantoniou and Kimon Koulouris and the insistence on excluding the expelled from the ballots.
11. The ballot for the national constituency in the last elections: the neutralization of Fofi Gennimata, the exclusion of Patoulidou, Polemarchakis, etc.
12. The non-utilization and the non-promotion of the Program
13. The underutilization of the entire human resources that PASOK has at its disposal in the last 3.5 years and the abandonment of the organizations.
14. The early demand for elections, when all the polls showed that we were losing, as well as the inability to set priorities.

• We need a new strategy. A new identity. A new image. To reconcile the archaic with the modern, to rearrange our forces, to reconnect with society.

• The defeat of 16.9.07, by the worst government, as we said, was decisive (a smaller percentage than in 1989).

• Losses both to the right and to the left. Shrinking PASOK.

• Let us study the British Labour Party. After 20 years in opposition, it shaped a new strategy based on the new economic and social data. It spoke about markets, about consumers, about competition, and the new reality created by the globalization of the economy. It talked, in other words, about real problems and proposed solutions. With the exception of the involvement in the Iraq war, Blair left a significant legacy mainly in the fields of education, health, childcare, and elderly care, combating poverty while simultaneously maintaining a strong economy.

• There is no danger of the fragmentation of PASOK from a normal democratic process. The SPD changed leaders 4 times after Schröder’s departure.

• I stand in favor of a change in leadership. For me, the stakes are the acquisition of power because I do not want PASOK to end up like the Monastery of Esphigmenou (A. Papadopoulos) or NGOs. The country cannot endure another New Democracy.