A new political actor has burst onto the left in Greece and aspires this Sunday to run as the new leader of the Progressive Alliance party known as Syriza. This is Stefanos Kasselakis, a 35-year-old economist who until now lived in the United States – where he has developed his entire professional career – and who has hardly any political experience. He defends the most liberal sector of the party and is openly gay. Thus follows a long list of unusual attributes in the Greek left-wing party, which has generated detractors and admirers in equal measure.
Kasselakis was unknown among party members and voters until the end of August, when he presented his candidacy to lead the party. In a video published on social networks, he introduced his electoral proposal with a story of personal and economic improvement in the United States, far from the motherland Greece. His candidacy soared in the polls, although he was never in front of the polls. However, he won the first round with 45.4% of the votes against the favorite candidate, Efi Ajtsioglu, who got 36.2%.
Electoral participation was higher than expected, with more than 80% of the 170,000 members going to the polls. “It was an unexpectedly high turnout, which marks the first step for the country to have a progressive government,” Kasselakis said after election day. Although it remains to be seen who the bases will support in the second round, Kasselakis plays with the symbolic advantage of having taken nine points over Ajtsioglu in the last vote.
Before submitting his proposal to lead the party, he unsuccessfully attempted to run for Mayor of Athens. Kasselakis is a native of Maroussi, a northern suburb of the Greek capital. When he was 14 years old, his family decided to move to the United States, where a few years later a young Stefanos began his degree in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. In parallel with his studies, he made his first steps in politics as a volunteer for the then senator – and now president – Joe Biden for the 2008 presidential elections. He has also worked as a foreign policy advisor at a strategic studies center in Washington . However, his most striking job is at Goldman Sachs, the American bank known in Athens for helping to manipulate its public accounts in the early 2000s, which caused – among other circumstances – the country’s economic fall. After leaving the entity, he set up his own shipping company and lived in Miami until the middle of this summer.
His business and liberal profile is one of the aspects that has provoked the most detractors among the ranks of the party. His rivals accuse him of hobnobbing with the capitalist world, but Kasselakis defends himself by saying that thanks to his work experience he “has understood the arrogance” of economic circles. For his critics, his athlete’s demeanor and charismatic image fit more with the imagination of an American leader than a Hellenic one.
Kasselakis has also unearthed electoral promises that the left has not debated in Greece for years and that have been a source of reproach, such as the professionalization of the Army to end compulsory military service. He also suggests the separation between Church and State, an issue that former Syriza leader and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras did not dare to touch for fear of losing the support of his governing partner, the nationalist Independent Greeks party ( Anel). The fact that Kasselakis is openly homosexual and speaks openly about his partner, the American nurse Tyler McBeth, has surprised the Greek training and media, taking into account that Greece is still at the bottom of Europe in terms of rights and legislation. LGTBi. In an interview with the Greek magazine Antivirus, Kasselakis noted that he does not have “a gay agenda” but rather “a human agenda.”
Greek media have speculated that a possible victory for Kasselakis could cause a split in Syriza, because the most traditional sector of the party considers him a character far from the heart of the formation, with no political experience and no presence in the Greek Parliament. “We don’t want Instagram politicians,” Nikos Filis, a member of the party’s Central Committee, said clearly about Kasselakis. Syriza has long had a great internal division between those who suggest a more leftward turn and those who defend a more modest approach of opening towards the center-left. The party has also been weakened by corruption scandals and allegations that party officials had appointed family members to senior positions in the public sector.
Now, the question falls on the influence of the candidates who did not pass the first round of voting. Nikos Pappas, who obtained 8.6% of the vote, has already spoken in favor of Kasselakis, while Euclid Tsakalotos, who obtained 8.4%, will support Ajtsioglu. Kasselakis also has the support of former minister Pavlos Polakis, who has publicly shown his preference for his candidacy. In recent days, Greek media have revealed that the young candidate also has the support of deputy Yorgos Tsipras, Alexis’ brother. For his part, the former prime minister was believed to be confident in Ajtsioglu’s victory, but there is speculation that he may have switched sides. This Sunday we will meet the new leadership of Syriza, which will have the duty of pushing the party into forced marches to gain ground over Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s New Democracy in the local elections on October 8.
