Both the ruling New Democracy party and the opposition PASOK dismissed Alexis Tsipras's newly launched Greek Left Coalition as a superficial rebranding of a discredited political record, with PASOK going further by quoting one of Mr. Tsipras's own former advisors to argue that a leader's history cannot be erased by a new party name.
New Democracy issued a statement calling ELAS an exercise in "archaic historical naming" backed by economic promises without substance.
"Society is demanding rapid forward momentum," the party said. "Mr. Tsipras simply desires to drag Greece back into past decades of toxic division."
PASOK's response was sharper.
The party published a detailed memo calling ELAS a cynical "private vehicle," challenged Mr. Tsipras's progressive tax credentials by citing his government's record of squeezing middle-class households, and quoted former Tsipras advisor George Siakantaris — writing in Ta Nea in 2024 — to turn his own circle against him.
"Can a leader hope to unify a progressive defeat of the right when he deliberately introduced the country's worst far-right elements into his own coalition cabinet in 2015?" the PASOK memo said. "People change, but their history follows them; that does not change."
The dual attack on launch night reflects the political stakes: ELAS entered the field polling level with PASOK for second place, making Mr. Tsipras an immediate competitive threat to the socialists' position as the primary opposition alternative to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's government ahead of the 2027 elections.