By Antonis Anzoletou

The European elections on June 9 will be held with the cross system as in 2019. Party staffs are already fighting a race to attract candidates with the greatest possible “displacement”. Whether it is in some cases celebrities or persons with a strong scientific, political or social footprint. In SYRIZA, they attach great importance to the innovation introduced by Stefanos Kasselakis, that the candidates are elected through an intra-party referendum.

The deadline for collecting resumes on isyriza ended on Sunday. It is said that some applications have already been singled out and will go through a second “filtering” before the final list is drawn up on March 22. The primaries are scheduled to take place on April 14 after the candidates conduct a pre-election campaign that will also help rally the party. Executives had suggested for several months to the president to keep some positions, which he would “distribute” according to the needs that would exist and the demands that would be caused by the ballots of the other parties. According to reliable information, published by Sunday’s “K”, these will eventually be five. The proposal was initially for four, but at the last meeting of the Executive Office the president got the “green light” to increase them by one, as due to the quotas for representation per region, but also for gender, some gaps may arise. They announce from Koumoundourou that it will not be the ticket for “celebrities” to enter the Eurolist and that the president may give a second chance to candidates who either could not stand out in the primary elections or who represent some minorities from civil society. With these data from the intra-party referendum, 37 of the 42 positions on the European ballot will be selected. The rest will be a “principal right”. The ranking of the candidates from the primary elections will not be known in order for everyone to enter the battle of the European elections from the same starting point.

SYRIZA attaches great importance to these polls, as it is estimated that they could be a restart for the party. “These European elections should be the beginning of the end of the arrogant and anti-popular Mitsotakis government,” pointed out the secretary of the party, Rania Svigou, in an interview with “Macedonia tis Kyriaki”.