Some Syriza members felt shame

This coming Monday will be a crucial day for this country’s political life. The Syriza-Independent Greeks party coalition is in danger of breaking up.

The reason? It is not just Defense Minister Panos Kammenos being implicated in the sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia, nor the unclear role of a middleman named Papadopoulos, but an ideological aspect of the affair. It is the aspect highlighted by Syriza MP Nikos Filis.

The former education minister is not complaining about the sale of weapons in general, nor about the procedures that were followed, and which will undergo parliamentary review on Monday. On the contrary, he is up in arms over this particular munitions sale to that particular country.

He invokes the Left, saying that it is ideologically ‘’defending the values and ideals of all humanity’’. He is challenging in its entirety “the defense ministry’s decision to sell munitions to the Saudi regime, at a time when its air force and that of the United Arab Emirates have been charged by international observers with being implicated in the Yemeni Civil War, bombing targets and provoking casualties among the unarmed civilian population, and creating a huge humanitarian disaster.’’

Until now, ideological disputes between government cadres with the choices of the Independent Greeks coalition partner concerned that party’s refusal to support bills involving citizens’ rights. As is well known, the Independent Greeks’ lack of sensitivity for individual rights has been compensated for by opposition MPs and parties, so there was no significant impediment to the government’s work.

But this time the situation is more serious. Nikos Filis is putting the government on the spot because this particular decision of the defense ministry bolsters a kind of government authoritarianism, which normally should have had nothing to do with the values system of Syriza, and of the Left more broadly. The same stance has been adopted by several Syriza MPs, including Yorgos Kyritsis, Nikos Xydakis, and Interior Minister Panos Skourletis.

If these MPs really believe their criticism, and it is not just for show, either for intra-party reasons – remember Filis was the loser in the last government reshuffle after clashing with Kammenos – or in order to keep open the channels of communication with the broader centre-left, in case the pressure of events distances Alexis Tsipras from Panos Kammenos, the government may be seriously shaken.

Panos Kammenos, who was recently convicted of calling for the lynching of a political opponent, the minister who has been blamed for trying to influence the judiciary by having conversations with a person serving a life prison sentence, the militant right winger, is not a necessary partner. He is a living stain that besmirches those who invoke the moral advantage of the left.

That for the first time certain Syriza members expressed their shame over the government’s deals with this man, may provide a political and ethical content of which it has been deprived by the cynical exercise of state authority.

This is just as long as it is authentic shame, and not the opportunistic designs of a self-interested group whose members feel side-tracked.

Elias Kanellis

in.gr