Below is the statement of Thodoris Kritsa's withdrawal from SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance.

Piraeus, 12 November 2023

P a g e

1/. Organization of the Members of the Piraeus B Division

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance

2/. Piraeus Prefectural Committee

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance

3/. Member Organizations A' Piraeus & Islands & B' Piraeus

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance

4/. Dear friends citizens of Piraeus & the Islands,

who for many years supported SYRIZA

or who today continue to support

the SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance

5/. My fellow citizens, Piraeus citizens

Statement of withdrawal from SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance

It is with deep regret that today I leave SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance. Already a few hours ago, forty-six members of the Central Committee submitted a letter of withdrawal (attached), explaining the reasons for this important and difficult choice.

I was an active member of the Space for Dialogue and Joint Action of the Left, with the unforgettable Yannis Banias as a pioneer of this visionary effort and with Nikos Konstantopoulos as President of SYNASPISMOS at that time. As a result of that effort, I had the historic honour of being a founding member of SYRIZA, with its first President Alekos Alavanos and then Alexis Tsipras, with whom we marched together on a victorious course for the modern Renewal and Radical Left in Greece and Europe. The highlight of 2015 was the mandate of the Greek people for the first ever Government of the Left.

Today, in my opinion, SYRIZA no longer exists! Not the SYRIZA I wish for, but SYRIZA. That is, the SYNASPISM OF RIZOSPASTSISTIC ARISTERA. From now on what exists is the «Kasselakis party». We are undoubtedly all responsible for this. But SYRIZA does not exist. Nor do its founding members remain in it, with very few exceptions.

However, the need and the possibility of an effective presence and offer of the Renewal and Radical Left in Greek society exists!

Thousands of citizens of Piraeus from 2004 (the year we did not elect a SYRIZA MP in Piraeus) until 2023, trusted us, supported us and honoured us. I repay them with honour and gratitude. They knew and know well that it was not a personal affair but an inspired agreement with reciprocity and a goal of regeneration and social justice for our country and for Piraeus.

I honour and respect all the compañeras and compañeros who have been with me for more than twenty years.

I honour and respect the citizens of Piraeus.

I honour and respect our successes and our failures.

I am not erasing anything from this twenty years.

With this valuable and irreplaceable experience, with a deep awareness that times are not only difficult, but that we are literally walking in the «age of monsters», I invite you all with confidence and with your heads held high, not to a new beginning from scratch, but to a new brave and deep cut in the continuity of the Renewal and Radical Left in Greece and in Europe.

I belong to that category of people who have consistently defended and served the unity of the Left. But the Left, not the Kasselakis party. From this point of view, not a single parliamentary seat of SYRIZA - Progressive Alliance belongs to the newly formed Kasselakis party. Everyone judges and takes his or her own responsibility.

Finally, I ask the competent organs of the party to see to it that I am removed from its registers.

From the «registers» of living reality the historical continuity will regulate it...

I attach the collective text of the forty-six comrades of the Central Committee of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, which we submitted today, Sunday, November 12, 2023.

Good matches!

With appreciation, respect and love,

Thodoris Dritsas

The withdrawal text of SY.RIZ.A.P.S. members who are members of «Umbrella»

the Secretary of the SY.RIZ.A.P.S.,

the Deputy Secretary of SY.RIZ.A P.S.

Notification to the President of SY.RIZ.A P.S.

Dear comrade, dear comrade

This text was not easy to write. It did not come about without reflection, without deep thought, pain and anguish for the present and the future of the Left. After all, most and most of us had taken an active part, along with many and many others, in the creation of SYRIZA. And all these years we fought passionately for the common cause. With moments that made us feel proud, such as the Prespes agreement, the coverage of 2.5 million uninsured by the NHS, the tackling of the humanitarian crisis, the restoration of collective agreements, the increase of the minimum wage and the abolition of the epidemic minimum wage for young people, the drastic reduction of unemployment, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, but also in the past with our participation in social movements, in the Grigoropoulos marches, in the squares, in the Social Forum, in the labour and anti-racist movement, in the struggle to defend Article 16, in so many other ways....

We don't forget any of this. We keep it as a legacy for the future.

We do not forget the difficult moments. The moments when we felt uncomfortable, difficult, minority, but we continued the journey. We do not forget our own responsibilities. The moments when we failed to act or failed to stop what we saw coming, especially the violent mutation of our party, its leadershipism, its gradual departure from the principles and values of the Left, its dissolution into a blurred and anodyne polysyllabism.

But the time has come to answer a crucial question, which has de facto been asked.

Do the ideas of the renewing and radical Left fit into the current Syriza PS, even if they are not majority? The answer, unfortunately, is negative. And it is not us who gave the answer.

The new leadership - and we are not only referring to the new president - took care to describe the new party as opposed to the «old» one from the very beginning. Only yesterday St. Kasselakis described SYRIZA as a «sick party» and announced the unheard of, bonapartist and certainly deeply undemocratic: the holding of a referendum on the «disaffiliation», as he said, of the four party cadres. We would say that this was the straw that broke the camel's back. The practice of trampling, applied for the first time in history, particularly in a party that has established pluralism, freedom of dissent, democracy itself. Such a practice of persecution of historical members of our space, in fact, means persecution and erasure of the left itself from the new SYRIZA PS, which we fear no longer has anything to do with SYRIZA as we have lived it.

His speech to the JU was a monument to arrogance, authoritarian and undemocratic behaviour. As an “unmediated” he essentially abolished the institutions, even the Ethics Committee, and stubbornly refused to vote on the issue he himself defiantly and subversively raised.

As an absolute “ruler”, in a party that is being devalued on a daily basis, she made accusations, the likes of which have perhaps never been made before. It is, unfortunately, the new authoritarian “culture” that is putting its stamp on a party that is shifting at breakneck speed from the left to the familiar, possibly unknown to the history of the country, space of conservative post-politics.

But the messages were many. There was the speech of St. Kasselakis« speech at the SEV, which referred to the need for cooperation between capital and labour, a reference that in essence put the stamp of a violent turn to the right and neoliberal paths and leads to a break with the world of labour. It was the light that... won the darkness. The chillingly »neutral« statement on Israel and Palestine. The complete absence of the leadership group from the Gaza mobilisations. The »apology« of Theodora Tzakri for what the left did in 2011 - 2015. The replacement of the radical with the... patriotic left. The authoritarian order from above to delete four historical members, including two former party secretaries. The authoritarian and despotic decree »anyone who does not agree with me will be off the ballot papers«. The toxic climate, the neo-Austrianism and right-wing populism, the shouting and fanaticism, the hatred of 3% and the historical course of the Left, which put their stamp on the public debate. It was the unmediated relationship between the »leader" and the people and the virtual abolition of Membership Organisations. The replacement of politics with communication and tactics. It was and is the constant deconstruction of the left, ecological and radical identity of the party in the name of a shift to the centre.

The new leadership of the party promised in a primitive way to change everything. But this promise was accompanied by the old recipe for defeat. And while authoritatively ripping up people without procedures, even those of the enlargement, it has kept a close eye on the constant and violent mutation, the very thing that has led to constant defeats and loss of political and social influence. This is evidenced by the polls, which bring PASOK-KINAL within touching distance of SYRIZA PS, with constant spill-overs to other forces, mainly of the left and abstentionism. The shift and crowding, in the end, to the centre and populist conservatism, spreads disillusionment among the people of the Left, who see a historic project being undermined and demolished from within. In this way, the New Democracy's bet to «end the Left» has found fertile ground within the walls, by a group that is daily divorcing itself from its principles and values and is «inspired», at best, by the model of the Democratic Party of the United States!

Because we feel the historical responsibility. Because we insist on the left and our vision is socialism with freedom and democracy, we can no longer legitimize by our presence the crime committed against an ideological and political project that is unique in Europe.

We feel the need to protect the political space we have served for so many years from further vilification.

We, members of the Central Committee, declare that we are leaving SYRIZA-PS. We remain on the ranks and in the cause of the renewing - radical Left. We choose to serve the possibility of defending a new victorious perspective of the radical Left. It is a matter of conscience and responsibility. For a modern Left, part of and in interaction with the European and international Left. For a left with critical thinking, deeply democratic, youthful, ecological, feminist, kinetic, anti-racist. For a Left firmly on the side of the world of work and the poor.

PS: To those who have been hoping and seeking for years the end of the Left: «You will not get rid of it so easily»

...................................................................

MEMBERS OF THE CC SIGNING THE TEXT