“The greatest joy will be if we can change this country, make it a Greece of progress”, said the president of SYRIZA-PS, Stefanos Kasselakis, speaking to OPEN.

He said about the people’s response: “People are slowly understanding me, I feel it. It is not by chance that by presenting myself at the conference and after and going outside the closed building, listening to the people, opening the party structures to the society, to the members, to the friends that we have taken over now. The river does not turn back. This will be built. To me, the most left-wing thing anyone can do is to wake up and try to make their fellow man’s life a little better. This is the most leftist thing. The action”.

Regarding the government he will form if he wins the parliamentary elections, he said: “I believe I have the guarantees to have a really excellent government and not the one we currently have in our country. Excellent in results, in respect for the fellow man, not exploiting his life and despair or his information, his individual rights. And with people, with children who will be brilliant minds, have high morals and have deep empathy. All my cabinet in the future will be people who will have this focus on man. The new executives will certainly bring a technocratic proficiency and a freshness and a more internationalized and modern approach, which I think is very important for the place. That is, when Kyriakos Mitsotakis called me an “imported leader”, I’m sure many thought: “Why, you local have done well? You locals have left us in a good situation?”.

He placed particular emphasis on the issue of security: “In the neighborhood, don’t be afraid that your daughter will go out and be killed in front of a police station. And obviously national security. Because we are in an area which is flammable. So when you have a level of security, then everyone has their own way of being satisfied with their life and being happy.”

About his political plan he noted: “The reality is that if I succeed in what I’m doing, many careers of traditional politicians will end. It changes the whole game. What is meant by party pipe, what is meant by ruffians, what is meant by wooden speech. Suddenly it will be a new field, much more democratic in how one can enter politics and much more efficient because there will be accountability. Accountability within a system that doesn’t reward being someone’s parrot.”

He referred to Alexis Tsipras: “Alexis Tsipras has never left. He never left. What he did is that he left a new wave of renewal in the party, for which party is our flag.”

He spoke about private universities: “The way they are at the moment with the minimum admission base, Greek children cannot study and will be forced to pay tuition fees here, which will become scholarships outside for branches in very low-quality franchise universities, when we could already have branches of foreign universities in public universities for free.”

Regarding his political relationship with the democrats of America, he said: “What unites the very progressives in America and the Left in Greece, is a thirst to improve everyone’s life, that is, solidarity, especially for our weakest fellow citizens. And I really say kudos to the progressive part of the Democrats, the part that Bernie Sanders and this group represents, because they’ve been able to bring their ideas together with the broader party and they’ve accomplished a lot. And this is exactly what we should see as a compass, the result is what counts, which improves the world’s life”.

Regarding his religious beliefs, he said: “Yes, of course I believe. I believe it gives me strength. But I believe that any god to one who has faith, can draw strength from his faith. That is, I do not believe that because I am a Christian, the other person who is not a Christian has less faith than me. And in fact, I would like in our democracy for the State to be able to treat him in an equal way, in an equal way”.