Elis

Tucked away in the rugged mountains of southwest Arcadia in the Peloponnese stands a marvel of ancient Greek architecture, the Temple of Apollo "Epikourios" at Bassae.

This past weekend SYRIZA held a four-day convention that was filled with drama and chaos, with both its identity as well as its leadership being challenged. With a new leadership race narrowly avoided, the question remains if there is a leader in the fragmented center left that can unite the opposition.

Police in the western Peloponnese have arrested five non-nationals suspected of involvement in armed robbery and kidnapping.

The suspects are believed to be behind the burglary of homes in Kavasila and Psari. both in Ilia prefecture, during which they also abducted seven foreign nationals at the same time.

Following several weeks of tensions, a left-wing faction within SYRIZA, Greece's main opposition, announced on Sunday that it was peeling off, accusing newly elected leader Stefanos Kasselakis of "Trumpian practices" and abandoning the party's core left-wing ideology for a sort of "right-wing populism."

New Democracy will win the upcoming elections with a huge margin and Kyriakos Mitsotakis will be re-elected prime minister.

As of now, the most likely scenario is of seven parties entering Parliament, compared to the five that passed the 3% threshold in the May 21 election.

Konstantinos Tasoulas has been reelected as the speaker of Parliament with 270 votes.

Lawmakers from New Democracy, SYRIZA, PASOK, and Greek Solution voted in favor, while Communist Party (KKE) MPs voted "present."

In a roll call vote with 296 participating MPs, 270 voted "yes" and 26 voted "present."

The main opposition will focus on winning back some ground in the next electoral battle set for June 25, after the party suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday's general election, according to SYRIZA sources on Monday.

According to Wolfango Piccoli, co-president at financial advisory firm Teneo, Sunday's election result had a "devastating" impact on the SYRIZA leftist opposition, while leaving New Democracy in a dominant position with limited scrutiny.

"It is a devastating outcome for the opposition, especially for SYRIZA," Piccoli told news website Politico.

In the latest poll four days before the election, ruling New Democracy maintains a 6.7 percent lead over main opposition SYRIZA, according to a poll by Alco on behalf of Skai TV. 

Projected results based on voting intentions gave the conservatives 32.7 percent of the votes ahead of SYRIZA with 26%. 

Greece's Parliament voted on Tuesday to ban the extreme-right Greeks-National Party from running in the upcoming elections, aiming to block its members linked to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn criminal organization from entering parliament. The decision comes ahead of what could be a tight race between the ruling New Democracy and opposition Syriza parties.