Voters in Greece have sent not one but three far-right nationalist parties into the parliament. This has happened for the first time since the restoration of democracy nearly 50 years ago. The parties garnered 12.8 per cent votes between them and have bagged a total of 300 seats in parliament.
Chief amongst them are the Spartans — whose logo is an ancient warrior’s helmet — a party so little known that local journalists did not even know where their offices were.
The general election they contested on Sunday was their first. The party appeared in opinion polls just two weeks before the vote.
However, the man who backs the party is widely known in Greece. Ilias Kasidiaris is the former spokesman of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn. The party was labelled a criminal organisation by the courts and banned from contesting elections.
Kasidiaris is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence along with other Golden Dawn members for crimes including murder of an anti-fascist rapper.
Hellenes, the party he founded after leaving Golden Dawn, had also been blocked from standing in the polls.
In spite of his criminal record, Kasidiaris’ endorsement led to Spartans picking up 140,000 votes and bag 12 seats.
The party leader Vasilis Stigas thanked Kasidiaris after Sunday’s vote, calling him “the fuel that gave us the push to get this result.”
Other than the Spartans, the more established pro-Russia party Greek Solution obtained 230,000 votes which were enough to elect 12 lawmakers. The party is led by former telesales marketer Kyriakos Velopoulos.
Velopoulos, whose party first appeared in the 2019 European parliamentary election, used to peddle beeswax as a treatment for hair loss on his television show, as well as letters allegedly written by Jesus Christ.
Other than these two parties, the anti-abortion Victory party bagged 10 seats. It is led by a theologian who is fond of reciting psalms during his speeches.
Its manifesto included a plan to require immigrants to undergo monthly health, working status and penal record checks. Anyone who failed to comply would be expelled from Greece.
“Although I was afraid of the far right’s rise, I did not expect us to be facing the most far-right parliament in recent Greek history and one of the worst in Europe,” wrote Aristides Chatzis, a law professor at the University of Athens, in Kathimerini daily.
Support appears to be strongest in northern Greece, a traditional stronghold of the right.
Far-right parties took more than 20 percent of the vote in six electoral districts in the northern Macedonia region.
(With inputs from agencies)
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