Paschos Mandravelis

Former prime minister Antonis Samaras did not avoid the well-trodden path that I pointed out a year ago in Kathimerini: “The refrain of every one of his statements, every one of his speeches, every one of his interviews is ‘And it turned out that I was right.'”

Strikes are a big thing. So big, indeed, that they become the top news item in the media in all healthy democracies. And the rarer a mass mobilization is, the greater its impact.

Wednesday's TV debate between the candidates for the new SYRIZA leader did not garner the same attention as the corresponding debate held by PASOK, nor did it demonstrate the same level of seriousness.

For leftist SYRIZA, the real challenge now lies ahead. We don't mean the likelihood of more MPs defecting from its parliamentary group or the fact that the ill-mannered Pavlos Polakis came second in Sunday's party leadership race with a stunning 43% that established him as the de facto voice of the opposition within the party.

With the Thessaloniki metro's inauguration out of the way, the next cause of celebration we have to look forward to is the installation of new traffic cameras, which the government has vowed to do by the summer of 2025. Government officials will gather at the headquarters of the Athens Traffic Police (at least taxpayers won't have to pay for their travel expenses), the prime minister will smile as he presses the button switching on the system, television cameras will zoom on the light on a traffic camera turning green from red, the officials will make all sorts of weighty proclamations and an army of reporters out in the streets will approach motorists with questions like “Will you keep running red lights now that the cameras have been installed?” In short, we will celebrate the opportunity of feeling like Europeans again.

The left's main problem today is that it may have won the war of words, but it has lost the battle of narratives. For example, almost no one uses the term “illegal immigrant” anymore, but measures designed to prevent migration are taken all the time, everywhere.

We cannot but ask: Why should the term of the president of Greece be extended to six years from five and not to seven? And why should there be a one-term limit? How would these planned amendments to the Constitution prevent what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has described as a “chorus of conflicting views” and spare the office of being used to serve narrow political interests?

It is true, as the Maximos Mansion asserts (and its loyal mouthpieces uncritically echo), that Konstantinos Tasoulas, who was nominated on Wednesday for president of the republic, was previously elected with an overwhelming majority as Parliament speaker.

After the constitutional revision of 1985, the selection of candidates for the Presidency of the Greek Republic serves two purposes: One is for people to have something to talk about and bet on in cafes, so that we can forget a little about our big problems – inflation, poor public infrastructure etc.

We cannot count exactly how many of the 2,245,978 (36.34%) Greeks who voted for leftist SYRIZA exactly 10 years ago believed in the party’s “Thessaloniki Program,” which provided for benefits and balanced budgets.