2023-05-02 18:54:37
Behind bars, Ilias Kassidiaris still finds ways to show off. Former MP and former spokesman for the disbanded neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is serving a 13-year prison sentence for “belonging to a criminal organization” in the high security prison of Domokos, 250 kilometers north of Athens. This does not prevent him from campaigning from his cell before the general elections on May 21.
The xenophobic leader boasts of the support of more than half a million Greeks for his party, the National-Hellenes Party which he founded in June 2020, four months before his conviction, imprisonment and banning of Dawn golden. On YouTube, in any case, he has 136,000 followers and his videos are regularly viewed hundreds of thousands of times. A few weeks before the election, the pollsters credit him with enough votes to cross the 3% mark required to be represented in Parliament.
Ilias Kassidiaris found the parade to circumvent the ban
Anxious to block neo-Nazis, the Vouli, the Greek parliament, adopted an amendment on February 9 to ban elections from parties whose leaders have been convicted of a serious criminal offence. Ilias Kassidiaris found the parade: he entrusted the presidency of the party to Anastasios Kanellopoulos, a former deputy prosecutor at the Supreme Court and former leader of the extreme right formation EAN.
On April 11, Vouli returned to the charge with a new amendment still aimed at excluding his party from the ballot, which was joined by several former members of Golden Dawn. The Supreme Court finally ruled on May 2 against his participation in the elections.
Despite this decision, the damage is done according to Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the left-wing Syriza party. For him, this media coverage has benefited Ilias Kassidiaris, reports the daily Kathimerini which echoes his television interview on May 2.
The government did a bad job
“Kanellopoulos appears more presentable. The banDoes the party’s action not risk mobilizing the far-right electoral base? », asks Joëlle Dalègre, historian specializing in contemporary Greece at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco). A fear shared by Georgios Samaras, political scientist at King’s College in London. In an article published on April 25 on the Euronews site, Georgios Samaras fears that history will repeat itself, as in 2013, when members of Golden Dawn were arrested for their involvement in the murder of the hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas. “Following this, in the 2014 European elections, the anger of Golden Dawn supporters propelled the party to nearly 10% of the vote,” he recalls.
According to the political scientist, Kassidiaris has already devised the means to circumvent a ban on his party. Kanellopoulos could carry his fight by reactivating his former inactive far-right party EAN. The government has, he insists, failed by wanting to specifically target Kassidiaris without considering his party merging with other political entities to legally participate in the elections.
The political context benefits the far right
But the political context benefits the far right. Last year’s phone-tapping scandal, and more recently the tragic train collision that claimed the lives of 57 people on February 28, have weakened the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his right-wing New Democracy party.
“This discredit has not benefited the left but could well inflate the scores of the far right and the ranks of abstainers”, considers Joëlle Dalègre. The far-right Greek Solution party, already represented by ten deputies in Parliament, is credited with around 5% of voting intentions.
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