The fears 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. Stéfanos Kasselakis, a businessman with a past at Goldman Sachs, beat the initial favorite, former Labor Minister Efi Ajtsioglu, who at the beginning had all the numbers to become the new leader of the formation that ran out with the resignation of Alexis Tsipras after the painful electoral defeat in the June elections against the right wing of Kiriakos Mitsotakis.
Kasselakis won 56.6% of the vote over Ajtsioglu, who was held back with 43.3% of the support of more than 130,000 people who voted across the country. The ex-minister seemed like the logical choice for continuity with this radical left-wing party that came to power after falling 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”, he assured, after learning of his 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, therefore, the first leader of an openly homosexual Greek party. He has much more experience in the world of business, as a shipping entrepreneur, than in politics. However, he has convinced party members that the formation, in low hours for years, needs a complete change of course in view of the vigor of the Greek right-wing New Democracy.
Born in Athens in 1988, Kasselakis immigrated 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 in 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 explained, he realized “how much arrogance money brings” . He also volunteered for Joe Biden’s 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign.
His big goal now will be to unite a party in which many still look at him with suspicion. The leader of Syriza’s left wing, former finance minister Efklidis Tsakalotos, did not congratulate him.
