ATHENS — In an unlikely move for a party founded on an anti-banker platform, Greece’s main opposition Syriza party elected former Goldman Sachs trader Stefanos Kasselakis as its new leader on Sunday.
“I will never betray you,” Kasselakis told the supporters who gave him a rock-star welcome outside of his party’s headquarters late on Sunday.
With 75 percent of the votes counted on Sunday night, Kasselakis led his rival Effie Achtsioglou on 56.69 percent to 43.31 percent.
Syriza’s ballot came after the left-wing party suffered two crushing election defeats at the hands of conservative New Democracy this summer, leading Alexis Tsipras to resign after 15 years at its helm.
Newcomer Kasselakis appeared virtually out of nowhere when he announced his candidacy in late August, and managed to forge ahead of ex-Labor Minister Achtsioglou, the first woman to compete for the post and until then the favorite to win the leadership.
Kasselakis, the first openly gay party leader in Greece, is married to American Tyler McBeth, an emergency room nurse. The 35-year-old businessman, who has been dubbed “the golden boy” due to his investment banking past at Goldman Sachs, was based in the U.S. until this spring, lacks political chops and has little experience of the country in which he will now lead the main opposition party.
Meteoric rise promising everything and nothing all at once
Kasselakis’ rise to the top of Greece’s political landscape has been shockingly fast.
During the Greek national election in June, Kasselakis ran as an expatriate candidate on Syriza’s ballot, where few noticed him, and his bid failed.
Then less than a month ago in late August, he caused a stir by announcing he would be running to lead Syriza via a video that went viral: “My name is Stefanos and I have something to tell you,” he said, presenting himself as the person who could defeat right-wing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Kasselakis said he saw first-hand how capital was “buying cheaply other people’s labor” and how “arrogance makes money,” and decided a career in finance was no longer for him.
During his campaign, every aspect of Kasselakis’ personal life was scrutinized by the media, which focused on his lifestyle, his dress sense, his gym and eating habits. The press reported on the healthy omelettes Kasselakis ate for breakfast, his early-morning walks with his husband and their dog Farley, and on the sleeveless shirts he wore at the gym, before changing into crisp white shirts — sleeves rolled up, naturally.
But Kasselakis avoided interviews, and his political positions are far from clear.
Achtsioglou campaigned on a platform of wage rises, boosting the welfare state, bolstering public infrastructure and fighting the climate crisis.
Kasselakis, meanwhile, described himself as a patriotic leftist and said he wanted to “change it all” and recapture the “Greek dream.”
He says he wants to abolish military conscription, replacing it with social service, and establish a professional army. He called for increased public spending on education and moving ahead with the separation of church and state.
Nick Malkoutzis, editor and co-founder of economic analysis website MacroPolis, said Kasselakis’ lack of political background and absence of concrete ideology would have marked him as “nothing more than an oddity under normal circumstances.”
“Instead, in the context of a struggling party with no clearly defined reason for being, his candidacy had the advantage of promising all things to all people. Kasselakis could be just as attractive to those Syriza supporters looking for a route back to power as those looking for someone to shake up the party.”
Syriza’s evolution
A radically leftist Syriza came to power in 2015 during Greece’s financial crisis, defeating the country’s mainstream parties on a promise to end and reverse the fiscal austerity imposed by creditors. But its radicalism was dampened in the summer of 2015 when Tsipras, then the prime minister, signed the country’s third bailout. Greece finally exited the bailout era in 2018.
In choosing Kasselakis, Syriza’s members were looking for a leader who closely resembled Tsipras, according to Petros Ioannidis, a political analyst and the founder of the firm About People.
“None of the other candidates excited or convinced the Syriza voters, who were nurtured by the leadership profile of Alexis Tsipras and were looking for someone who resembled him,” Ioannidis said. “None of the others seemed to have these leadership characteristics. So they placed their hopes on someone they didn’t know in the hope that he would be closer to their ‘ideal.’”
Ioannidis added that the campaign tactics of the previous years “depoliticized the Syriza electorate and thus made it more receptive to non-classical leftist campaigns and prone to more libertarian approaches.”
Kasselakis’ victory thrusts Syriza into uncharted territory, and some fear it could tear the party apart.
“A party whose origins lie firmly on the left of the Greek political spectrum is being led by someone who is an unknown quantity and whose profile seems more that of a centrist than a leftist,” said Malkoutzis.
Malkoutzis added that the bleak reality for the Greek left is that combined, Syriza and the Socialist Party’s support in the June election was some 10 points short of New Democracy.
The two parties may need to join forces in order to compete with the conservatives at the next election — but that may prove difficult under Kasselakis’ leadership.
The question now is whether Syriza members will continue backing the newcomer as he is forced to reveal more of his policy platform.
“In the coming months we will know whether the relationship he has created today with Syriza voters will acquire more permanent characteristics or will prove to be a one-vote stand of mourning their former love,” Ioannidis said.
