SYRIZA candidate making waves
A new, slick entry into the succession race for the leadership of the main opposition party SYRIZA is threatening to upstage other candidates.
With a four-minute-and-20-second video and a 560-word text, 35-year-old Stefanos Kasselakis gave the stamp of his candidacy for the SYRIZA presidency, bidding to step outside the narrow party geographic boundaries.
“Do we want to put someone against Kyriakos Mitsotakis who will defeat him?” he asked at the end of the spot, emphasizing his claims that he is superior to the current prime minister – self-made – and that he understands business and finance better than the aces of New Democracy, not to mention his better command of English.
However, an article he wrote in Kathimerini English Edition last July, in which he praised Mitsotakis, is expected to be used by his critics in the coming period.
In a fluid and volatile political scene, the 35-year-old businessman chose, according to analysts, the given moment to enter the succession race with the aim of eliciting more noise and surprise. And he certainly succeeded. Those who say he hasn’t “logged miles” within SYRIZA to run for president believe he would have “deflated” if he had entered the electoral contest sooner. He appears to place a high value on his extensive portfolio, which includes scholarships he won as a straight-A student to the United States and his subsequent professional career. His passage through Goldman Sachs, when he “saw up close what capital is” and was prevented from “buying someone else’s labor on the cheap,” is simply a description of his leftist credentials.
His photo with former SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras in the video could be seen as a hint that he is receiving his backing.
However, the party has emphatically stressed that it has not given any “ring” and will remain until the end a simple guarantor of the party’s unity, keeping exemplary neutrality.
