The fears on the part of the radical wing of the Greek left were consummated on Sunday night, when the results of the second round of the primaries to elect the new leader of Syriza were made public. Stefanos Kasselakis, a businessman with a past at Goldman Sachs, beat the initially favorite, former Labor Minister Efi Ajtsioglu, who initially had all the numbers to become the new leader of the party that was beheaded with the resignation of Alexis. Tsipras after the painful electoral defeat in the June elections against the right of Kiriakos Mitsotakis.
Kasselakis obtained 56.6% of the votes against Ajtsioglu, who stopped at 43.3% of the support of the more than 130,000 people who voted throughout the country. The former minister seemed the logical option for continuity with this radical left party that came to power after finding its way among those disenchanted by the debt crisis, but the militants chose to turn the page with a completely opposite profile. “Today the light has won and hope is becoming our joint future,” she said, after learning of her victory.
Young – he is 35 years old –, gay and outsider, Kasselakis is the new Greek political surprise. Until a few weeks ago no one knew who he was. She lived in Miami with her husband, an American nurse, whom she married in the United States because same-sex marriage is not allowed in Greece. He is now, therefore, the first leader of an openly homosexual Greek party. He has much more experience in the business world, as a shipping businessman, than in politics. However, he has convinced party members that the party, which has been in a slump for years, needs a complete change of course in the face of the strength of the Greek New Democracy right.
Born in Athens in 1988, Kasselakis emigrated with his family at the age of 14 to the United States, where he studied Finance at the University of Pennsylvania with the help of a scholarship. He has rather liberal ideas on the economy and, in 2009, he started working as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, in the middle of the Greek financial crisis, but he left because, as he said, he realized “how much arrogance money carries.” . He also volunteered on Joe Biden’s 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign.
His great job now will be to unite a party where many still view him with distrust. The leader of Syriza’s most left wing, former Finance Minister Efklidis Tsakalotos, has not congratulated him. .
