The white background with a green line, chosen as the background for his first statement as the new PASOK leader, is a good first indication on how Evangelos Venizelos plans to manage the leadership of his party.
But the answers he gave in his first interview showed that the new «white page» Mr. Venizelos wants for PASOK is anything but white. The new PASOK, he said, will be a renewed PASOK that respects itself and its relationship with the citizens. It’s got a big hug for everyone and no one will be left out. In short, Mr. Venizelos returned to a favorite saying of his without uttering it explicitly, that he wants the… whole PASOK.
Only the whole PASOK no longer exists. Not even half of the whole PASOK exists. Instead, Mr. Venizelos is the leader of a party that is essentially politically and financially bankrupt. His statements indicate that once more, Greek politicians are simply incapable of dealing with reality. Just like his predecessor talked about imaginary money, Mr. Venizelos talks about a ghost party that no longer exists. It’s simply impossible for Mr. Venizelos to rebuild the relationship of PASOK with its voters, the Greek middle class, which Mr. Venizelos himself contributed in turning into the new Greek underclass by imposing some of the most brutal measures in the country’s history.
No new page will be written for PASOK because no new page can be written by the same people who were nursed in the party’s tube, who never worked in their lives, who got state jobs for their friends, their relatives and their children as if the Greek state were their own private business. PASOK is interwoven with people and practices that flourished in the fertile climate of corruption and the rule of nepotism of socialist leadership, and no one believes that it can benefit anyone else but itself and its people, the same people that brought Greece to the brink of bankruptcy.
PASOK’s internal proceedings on Sunday have no special significance. Not only because it was a one-horse race, but because the majority of crisis-hit Greeks couldn’t care less whether PASOK is going to survive or not, or whether power-hungry Venizelos will finally get Papandreou’s chair. It is remarkable that 250,000 Greeks decided to spend part of a sunny Sunday as well as two precious Euros to vote for Mr. Venizelos. But then again, PASOK is a big party with a massive mechanism, and is able to mobilize a significant part of the voters – voters who probably want to return a favor aka a state job they got with no qualification, fake disability pensions, fake social benefits, licenses to build illegal villas, and hotels in forests or right next to the beach.
That part of the population went to vote on Sunday. Either out of party patriotism or duty (of any kind) or because they still believe in it, despite what has been done the last two years. And it comes as no surprise that the majority of voters were over fifty. It’s the same generation that kept borrowing money at the expense of their children’s future, the hundreds of thousands of doctors, engineers, teachers and lawyers who have to work for 500 Euros a month in a country where coffee costs four Euros and Greek yoghurt is more expensive than it is in Germany. So no. Even if Mr. Venizelos considers the 250,000 voters a victory, the reality is that his party doesn’t stand a chance, nor does Mr. Samara’s New Democracy, the other party that promised to turn Greece into a European country but turned it into another Bulgaria instead.
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