More than 170,000 members of the Movement for Change (KINAL) voted on Sunday for the Socialist Party to change its name to PASOK and the “sun” to return to the logo of the party that has ruled the country for nearly 40 years.
Based on the results of the voting, it was decided that the new name of the party KINAL now it will be “ΠΑΣΟΚ-ΚΙΝΑΛ(PASOK-KINAL). “Our symbol, the sun, has returned,” party chairman Nikos Androulakis said.
The symbol returned “along with memories of a historical faction that was identified with our people’s struggle for democracy, social justice and national dignity,” he added.
From PASOK to KINALA
KINAL was founded in March 2018 as a political alliance between PASOK and other small centre-left parties “to get rid of its past” of the Greek debt crisis and party debts. KINAL also received a new registration number, and the repayment of debts was, as it were, postponed “forever”.
Formerly one of the largest left-wing parties in Greek politics, PASOK lost much of its popular support as a result of the Greek debt crisis. When it started, PASOK was the ruling party with Georgios Papandreou as prime minister, and he was in charge of negotiating Greece’s first bailout package with the European troika, which called for austerity measures. The negotiations took place in such a way that Greece actually lost its economic, and in many respects, political independence.
The results of PASOK’s activities, as a result, led to a sharp drop in the level of public confidence, which became clear in the next parliamentary elections, where this party received 13.2% of the vote, and in the elections in January 2015 – 4.68%.
However, against the backdrop of not particularly successful rule by its followers, the PASOK party in the version of KINAL was able to restore the confidence of voters, and in the 2019 elections, KINAL received 8.1% of the vote, becoming the 3rd party with 22 seats in the Greek Parliament.
Now PASOK is back with its green rising sun, minus old debts. Its supporters, known for their opportunism and having moved to the left to SYRIZA in 2015 and to the right to New Democracy in 2019, may return to the party if they think the new/old PASOK has a chance of forming a government in the next elections in 6 or 12 months.
Given the not very high rating of the New Democracy party, currently headed by Kiryakos Mitsotakis, as well as the recent (and not very good, from the point of view of the electorate) experience of Tsipras’s rule, the party has a chance to significantly increase its performance in the next parliamentary elections and even reach the second place, displacing SYRIZA.
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