Syriza nominating right-wing Pavlopoulos as presidential candidate – a serious political error

Tsipras announced yesterday that former New Democracy Minister of the Interior (2004-2009) Prokopis Pavlopoulos was to be the government's nominee for president. Read here a statement by .

[Also read our statements commenting on the events of the past week here and here]

Statement on the Syriza leadership’s decision to nominate P. Pavlopoulos as candidate for President of the Republic.

The choice of former New Democracy minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos as the candidate for President of the Republic (in the same way as opting to form a coalition with the bourgeois Independent Greeks), highlights the damaging and mistaken idea of the need for class collaboration and reconciliation of working people with a supposedly “progressive” wing of the ruling class, based on attempts to go into politics the leading group of the party.

This approach of the party leadership, which explains the significant retreats in recent days (putting on hold the closing down of the privatisation fund, the reconciliation with the major shareholders of the banks, etc.), regardless of intentions, undermines the government’s promise to stick its commitments.

No one should forget that, in special circumstances, the President of the Greek Republic has the constitutional powers to call elections and therefore putting up a right-wing candidate who would hold this office for the next five years is a completely reckless and dangerous political choice.