“Τhe new I bring is the return to the old, tidy Greece. In Greece, where the homemaker kept his house clean, followed the rules, the laws, was interested in his neighbor.” This was said by Stefanos Kasselakis, leader of main opposition party, left-wing SYRIZA.
“I have the will, I have clean hands, I have the international experience to bring big incisions. I am completely independent, I will never betray the people,” Kasselakis told a journalist at the Thessaloniki Summit 2023 and speaking about “South-East Europe’s moment: Chartering a new course to prosperity & stability.”
Of course, he spoke also about the SYRIZA officials who left the party and described prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as “cruel with dangerous policies.”
“Left-wing means justice everywhere,” Kasselakis stressed.
I will not comment on his statements about SYRIZA and the Premier or his own self-declared “exceptional” skills. But I will comment on his dream of “old, tidy Greece.”
How can a 36-year-old left-wing leader claim “innovation” when he wants to bring the Old as something New? Does he still admires Mitsotakis’ retro-rhetoric as he admitted he did a few years ago?
Holy Greek family in the school books of 50’s and 60’s where only grandma is content with grandpa 6 feet under….
Like many younger generations of US expats of Greek origin who left the country in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Syriza leader wants me to give up my job and stay at home sweeping, dusting, mopping my perfectly neat home, cooking beef stew with mashed potatoes, baking cheese-spinach pies with fyllo made of scratch, raise children and take care of my husband AND the neighbor.
At the same time, I will have to follow the rules and laws in a country where “anarchy” prevails…
PS I have no idea how many dirty houses he has visited in the few months he has been in Greece, but for sure, somebody must remind him that the traditional hand-made “semen” -doilies – slip down the Plasma TV unless a cat sits on it.
BTW on social media, Greeks commented that his rhetoric contains elements of the junta…
And some recalled the times when citizens had respect for the teacher, the priest and the gendarme officer, the three representatives of ‘authorities’ in the villages and the countryside in general.