Judicial sources familiar with electoral law and Supreme Court precedent have now weighed in directly on Kasidiaris’s release, stating unambiguously that the 2023 rulings still block him from forming or running a party in the upcoming elections. According to these sources, the legal precedent is not merely historical, it remains active and would be enforced again by the Supreme Court if tested.
The sources went further, clarifying a point that had previously been more implicit: Kasidiaris is barred not only from formally heading a party, but also from acting as a concealed leader behind a party fronted by someone else on paper. Because the 2023 precedent rests on his prior conduct within Golden Dawn’s criminal activity, for which his conviction is now final and irrevocable, sources say it applies with full force today, regardless of the passage of time or his release from prison.
A previously under-emphasized detail has also surfaced regarding the fallout from the Spartans affair: when the Electoral Court annulled the seats of three MPs found to be linked to Kasidiaris’s concealed leadership, it did not reassign those seats to other parties. As a result, Greece’s Parliament currently sits with 297 members rather than the standard 300, a lasting structural consequence of the 2023 episode that persists to this day.
Government Spokesman: No New Law Being Considered
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis addressed the matter directly when questioned on the sidelines of a briefing for political journalists, saying there is currently no consideration within the government of new legislative action regarding Kasidiaris’s potential participation in elections. He pointed instead to the existing framework and the Supreme Court’s role in applying it.
Marinakis noted that it was the current government that originally introduced the legislative provisions governing party participation in elections. He explained that under the existing framework, a party can be excluded from the electoral process if its formal or de facto leader has been convicted of specific offenses, for as long as that person is nominally still serving their sentence.
He was careful to draw a line, however, between the law itself and its application in any individual case. “The decisions concerning any person or any party are a matter for the Supreme Court, not for us,” he said, deferring to the judiciary’s judgment on whether the law’s conditions are met in each instance.
Separately, the timing of Kasidiaris’s release carries its own symbolic weight: it falls just days before the 13th anniversary of the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, which will be marked on September 18.
