Jailed Ex-Golden Dawn Member Announces Greek Election Candidacy

Golden Dawn party MPs Nikos Michos (L), Ilias Panagiotaros (C) and Ilias Kasidiaris (R) walk away from the Court House of Athens, 2 October 2013. Photo: EPA/ALEXANDROS VLACHOS

Conservative New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis pushed for a second election after failing to win an outright majority in legislative elections held on May 21.

Writing on his Twitter account, Kasidiaris said: "I will be an independent candidate in Athens with the coalition of Independent Candidates under the name Ellines [Greeks]," Kasidiaris said.

Kasidiaris's far-right Greeks National Party was excluded from the May 21 elections. The court decision was based on a new law that excludes parties whose leaders have been convicted of serious crimes from elections.

"The declaration of my candidacy," said Kasidiaris, "will be based on the provisions of the electoral law and on the opinion of Nikos Alivizatos [Greek professor of constitutional law].

"If Kasidiaris and his friends appear as a coalition of independents, not as a party, and collect more than 3 per cent of the votes (which is very likely now), they will be able to enter parliament … This is explicitly defined by paragraph 1 of article 99 of the electoral law," he added

Commenting on Kasidiaris' statements, Alivizatos told BIRN that he saw no real prospect of a "combination of independent candidates … It is, in fact, a political party. It is an obvious attempt to circumvent the prohibitive provisions of the recent law."

Professor Xenophon Contiades, president of the Centre for European Constitutional Law - Themistocles and the Dimitris Tsatsos Foundation, told BIRN that he had warned before that the law amendment excluding Kasidiaris party would not cover coalitions of independent...