Kasidiaris’party barred from elections

The Supreme Court has ruled that the National Party, founded by the convicted criminal and former Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris, may not contest the May 21 election.

The court’s decision is based on a recent law, passed by Parliament (voted by New Democracy and PASOK), which prohibits the participation in elections of those convicted of a number of serious offenses, including that of criminal organization.

Responding to the decision, Kasidiaris said the democratic institution “has been definitively abolished and half a million Greeks are deprived of the supreme right to vote for the party of their choice.”

He said his party was illegally targeted because it is the most honest and clean party on the domestic political scene.

“We expected this unprecedented aberration and we are fully prepared for the next day. Tomorrow afternoon my official announcements will take place,” he said.

In a statement his lawyer, Vaso Pantazi, said that Kasidiaris will not support any other party and that he will decide on Wednesday about his further legal actions.

Kasidiaris is serving a 13-year sentence as a directing member of a criminal organization (Golden Dawn).

However, the court ruled that the EAN party, founded by a former deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Anastasios Kanellopoulos, meets the legal requirements to contest the elections, even though its leader publicly stated, before deciding to run with his own party in the elections, that he would take over the leadership of Kasidiaris’ party so that it could evade a potential election ban.

The Supreme Court has blocked 14 parties that had registered to run in the upcoming May 21 elections.

Last week, the court barred two other extreme-right parties from the elections: Konstantinos Bogdanos and Prodromos Emfietzoglou’s Patriotic Union and Afroditi Latinopoulou’s Patrida party.