PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis promised deep changes in government as soon as he succeeds Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis after the next election – or, perhaps, a second one shortly after.
The socialist leader is trailing the ruling conservatives badly in opinion polls. He is actually in third place, behind former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ Greek Left Alliance. But PASOK officials keep repeating that voters will change their minds as the spring election approaches. Privately, they hope to overtake Tsipras for second place in the poll, in which, current surveys so, no party will gain an overall parliamentary majority: then, use this result to rally the fragmented opposition in a second election that will come shortly after, as it did in 2023.
Androulakis spoke Saturday evening at the Thessaloniki International Fair, the same forum where Mitsotakis gave his keynote speech last Saturday. His was the traditional slot given to the leader of the parliamentary opposition.
PASOK had come up in third place in the last national election. But the fragmentation of the runner-up, left-wing SYRIZA, propelled its parliamentary group to becoming the second largest.
Androulakis chose to speak as the only alternative to Mitsotakis. He has long insisted that only PASOK has come up with alternative policies to Mitsotakis’ and has accused Tsipras and his newly-minted ELAS party of lacking such a program or, worse, stealing PASOK’s ideas.
