SYRIZA: The challenge of unity and reinvention

Main opposition SYRIZA is going through a deep crisis, with both its identity as well as its leadership being challenged.

After months of intense infighting and a process that had the elements of a slow, painful self-destruction, on Sunday the party averted at the last moment what looked to be a political explosion, by opting not to hold a new election for president.

Last week, former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who had led SYRIZA to two election victories, intervened, expressing in a post his deep concern for the party's continuing slide in the polls, criticizing both his successor Stefanos Kasselakis and the latter's opponents within SYRIZA for fragmenting the left and benefiting ruling New Democracy, and calling for a special election to renew the mandate of the present head of the party or come up with a new leadership.

After much drama, and as the...