Consitutional lawyer dismisses Kasidiaris’ ploy to evade election ban
A constitutional lawyer dismissed on Thursday a claim by jailed former Golden Dawn deputy leader Ilias Kasidiaris that he could run in the next elections with a coalition of independent candidates, saying it is another effort to bypass a court ban on his party and candidacy.
Earlier in the day, Kasidiaris said he will run in Athens A, a parliamentary constituency in Attica that essentially corresponds to the Municipality of Athens, “with the coalition of Independent Candidates under the name Ellines (Greeks).”
He cited the provisions of the new electoral law, passed just before the elections to block his way to Parliament, and the opinion issued by constitutional law professor Nikos Alivizatos, who had said that if Kasidiaris and other party candidates run as a “coalition of independents” and not as a party they could participate in an election and possibly enter Parliament.
“There is no such thing as a coalition of independent candidates that covers the whole country. It is, in fact, a political party. It is an obvious attempt to circumvent the prohibitive provisions of the recent law,” Alivizatos said in a statement.
Kasidiaris, 42, founded the National Party-Greeks after receiving a 13-year prison sentence in 2020, but the Supreme Court barred his party citing legal amendments that disqualify parties led by politicians convicted of serious offenses.
