Left Platform’s meeting just made SYRIZA’s internal rift a little wider

The powerful “Left Platform” of the Radical Left Coalition met on Monday night in what looked like an election campaign (but wasn’t) following the faction’s rift with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras after he signed a deal with harsh austerity measures at the Euro Summit on July 13. Left Platform Chief Panagiotis Lafazanis took the podium, in the presence of Tsipras, and gave a speech that more or less said that the leftist faction of the radical left SYRIZA will fight against party policy to implement reforms required by the bailout accord.

The group meets again at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, but it is not known if Tsipras will be present as he had been on Monday afternoon when Lafazanis continued to use the “anti-Memorandum” rhetoric that brought SYRIZA to power in the elections of January 25, 2015. Refering to Iskra, the Left Platform’s website, Lafazanis said that the site took its name from the newspaper that Russian comrade Vladimir Lenin used a century ago. He explained that Iskra in Russia means “spark” and will ignite new struggles… all to the repeated chanting of “No!”

He reminded the audience that 62% of the population had voted “No” against austerity in the referendum held on July 5.

What does the Left Platform want:

1) An immediate alignment of SYRIZA views by the weekend. The group believes that the party has overhauled its policies and the central committee should position itself on the new policies as a body.

2) The Left Platform wants a committee meeting at the start of August, before the new memorandum is agreed to. The conference should be open and is likely to have over 3,600 members that were present in the last conference before SYRIZA charged into power.

3) Alekos Flambouraris, co-founder of SYRIZA, believes that another idea would be to hold a referendum of party members for the approval of Tsipras’ political plan.