PASOK

PASOK is carefully navigating shifting political dynamics on its left, as SYRIZA and its splinter group, the New Left, hold their respective conferences, all while confronting a dual offensive from the right.

The Migration and Asylum Ministry is facing a severe funding crisis, with unpaid bills reaching nearly €65.8 million.

While all eyes are on the US elections today, in Greece it seems that there is a permanent state of campaigning. After the PASOK elections a few weeks ago, SYRIZA is now preparing for its own leadership elections this month. In the meantime, internal drama in New Democracy and PASOK's improved poll numbers have caught the media's attention as well.

Recent polls concur that the socialist PASOK, fresh from a leadership election, is approaching 20% of voting intentions, while the main opposition SYRIZA is hitting new lows ahead of its own contest.

The government feels that its strategy to call PASOK's bluff on its reformist bona fides in Parliament by proposing legislation will work.

An attempt to elect a new Ombudsman has fallen through, with the government's nominee failing to secure the support of three-fifths of the members of Parliament's 30-member conference of speakers.

The nominee, Athens University politics professor Dimitris Sotiropoulos, received the backing of the 15 New Democracy members of the conference.

A disagreement erupted between the government and PASOK, this time over the ASEP and recruitment, with tensions remaining high. The occasion was the visit made earlier today by Nikos Androulakis to the ASEP, where he met with the chairman and members of the Board.

Alternative plans aimed at their personal political survival in the post Conference era are increasingly on the minds of more and more members of the SYRIZA Progressive Alliance, as the hourglass of Koumoundourou begins counting down from today for the party’s Extraordinary Congress.

The Marc poll presented on ANT1’s main news broadcast records a first place for New Democracy and a second place for PASOK, which shows a significant increase in its percentage.

The PASOK leadership stands against the possibility of changing the electoral law, stressing that a stable electoral system is needed.