Global Courant 2023-05-03 19:42:34
A Greek fascist sentenced to 14 years in prison for organized crime says his candidacy in this month’s general election is a democratic litmus test for his country.
Ilias Kasidiaris was the spokesperson for the disbanded Golden Dawn, a party that entered parliament in 2012 at the height of Greece’s economic woes following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Just over a year later, the 20 MPs were handcuffed and led to prison. The Supreme Court prosecutor saw the murder of a left-wing rapper by a Golden Dawn official as part of a pattern of violence against immigrants, the LGBTQ community and leftists and successfully prosecuted Golden Dawn as a criminal organization.
Kasidiaris has appealed his conviction and has been active in prison, tweeting messages to supporters.
This year he ran for his own party, the Greek National Party, in the May 21 general election. Opinion polls give him about 3.5 percent of the vote, enough to get into parliament.
But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s First Section, which vets parties ahead of elections, disqualified the party.
“Tonight the democratic system has been dissolved and half a million Greeks have been deprived of the cardinal right to vote for the party of their choice,” Kasidiaris’ lawyer said outside the Supreme Court after the decision, reading from a written message from her client.
“Greek National Party was an illegal target because it is the cleanest and fairest party on the domestic political scene. We anticipated this unprecedented dismay and are fully prepared for the next day,” the statement said.
When elected, Golden Dawn branded itself as a financially fair party, aiming to contrast with a mainstream political scene that had led the country to bankruptcy.
After Golden Dawn was indicted and parliament stripped it of its state funding, MPs funneled their salaries into the party coffers so it could continue to function. Kasidiaris adopts that political profile.
Protesters wearing masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus chant slogans during an anti-fascist protest outside a court in Athens, Greece (File: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
The ruling New Democracy conservatives have sought to ban neo-Nazism from parliament once and for all. In a country that suffered Nazi occupation and nearly a million deaths during World War II, many view the resurgence of fascism as a national disgrace.
Two years ago, the government passed an amendment that would exclude criminals convicted of organized crime from leading political parties, a measure designed to exclude Golden Dawn members from the political process.
In February, after Kasidiaris placed a retired army officer at the head of his party, the government expanded that amendment to bar felons from being party members or behind-the-scenes controllers of parties.
In April came a third amendment stating that the First Section of the Supreme Court must vet the parties in a plenary session to make its decisions transparent and legitimate.
But two days later Christos Tzanerikos, deputy president of the Supreme Court, resigned after saying he had been approached by a senior member of the government and told that he would be appointed head of an independent authority if he resigned the first section would steer in the right direction on the Kasidiaris. issue – suggesting that the government did not find its three amendments ironclad.
The government denied the allegation.
Kasidiaris gives a speech at an election rally in Athens (File: Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters)
New Democracy’s attempts to crush fascism have now unleashed a legal and political storm.
Since the turn of the century, four splinter parties on the New Democracy right have won seats in parliament. Opposition parties accuse Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of acting solely to disenfranchise new competitors.
“He looked at polls and weighed the issue,” socialist leader Nikos Androulakis said on the campaign trail.
“In recent months, he has seen Kasidiaris go up, which makes a one-party government more difficult,” he said, referring to the fact that the more parties enter the 300-seat legislature, the fewer seats are available for distribution among them pro rata. to their share of the vote.
“Only then did he bring a law against Golden Dawn,” concluded Androulakis.
New Democracy is expected to win about 32 percent of the vote — not enough to give it the 151 seats it needs to form a government on its own, and Mitsotakis has suggested he is unwilling to form a coalition.
Political motives
Kasidiaris’ lawyer, Vaso Pantazi, agreed that New Democracy’s motives were political.
“The changes happened as we approached the election,” she told Al Jazeera. “… You must do them in neutral time; otherwise someone will feel that they are personally targeting him.”
New Democracy had few options. Banning a party in Greece is practically impossible. Article 29 of the constitution says that any party may participate in elections “if it serves the free functioning of the democratic system”.
Under that vague formula, even the Communist Party of Greece, which adheres to Stalinism and sees Nikita Kruschev as the beginning of the end of communism, has been included in the legislature for half a century.
Greece tried to ban the Communist Party after its leaders unleashed a bitter civil war from 1944 to 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s, communists were sent to penal colonies.
Fears of a communist resurgence caused a seven-year suspension of democracy when a group of colonels seized power. After they fell in 1974, Greece reinstated the Communist Party and the new constitution prevented anyone from being expelled from office on the basis of ideology.
Even Golden Dawn was not convicted for his convictions.
“Golden Dawn has not been condemned because they are fascists or Nazis,” Interior Minister Makis Voridis said in parliament. “Golden Dawn has been convicted of committing crimes. … We are talking about criminals, convicts.”
The only way the government could keep Golden Dawn out of parliament was to deal with them as individuals.
Its amendments to the law allege that the Golden Dawn members’ inability to “support the free functioning of the democratic system” is based on their felony convictions.
But even that is unconstitutional, Pantazi said.
“The Greek constitution requires a final criminal conviction to bar a citizen from elected office, so a person must be found guilty on appeal to the Supreme Court,” she said. “Here we have the unique situation of a person who is deprived of office on a first conviction … while still enjoying the presumption of innocence.”
‘dire test’
Constitutional lawyer Yiannis Drossos agreed that the government’s approach has weaknesses.
“This is not a court ruling. This is an administrative decision made by judges, which means it will likely be subject to judicial review at a later stage,” he said of the Greek National Party’s disqualification.
He told Al Jazeera that the amendments on which the decision was based put the constitution to a “dire test”.
Kasidiaris has decided that his best course of action is to fight the judiciary and parliament as publicly as possible.
Pantazi said she believes Kasidiaris will win his case once his case has exhausted all domestic appeals and reaches the European Court of Human Rights.
“Greece will be convicted of flouting the presumption of innocence, as it is convicted of a number of violations,” she said. “It will take years, but some things are not done for the end result. They are ready for history.”
