THE CITY AND THE CANDIDATES

I only recently spent a month in Greece after some time. Last time I was there, June 2013, I visited Exarchia, the bohemian, ever-rebellious downtown neighborhood, to find it (and largely downtown Athens) squeaky clean. Heavily armed police had pushed out the homeless, the addicts, the elements of the neighborhood that make it look rough around the edges but also real. It was a weird feeling. The image repeated itself around the centre, with an atmosphere of security mixed with intimidation hanging over our heads.

This time it was very different. The drug trade has returned to Exarchia with a vengeance, its famous square becomes unapproachable even on a Saturday night, plainclothes policemen survey the new everyday. “It used to be that only a single drug sold around here, be it heroin, coke, sisa. Not it’s everything. All of Athens comes here to get high.” a friend of mine and long-time Exarchia resident tells me.

Exarchia is important, because it combines a high population density and mixed income levels. Young professionals, established lawyers, some bohemian aristocracy… they huddle around the narrow streets with the precariat; the students, the designers, the freelancers. Around the corner, the newly arrived immigrants selling black-market cigarettes and more, depends who you ask. It’s in this climate that Athenians were called in to vote on who is going to be the mayor of the formerly third richest municipality in the EU. And in this climate, the dividing lines are becoming clearer than ever.

The candidates to take the helm of the city for the next five years (after a recent change in the law that extends the mayor’s term to that) were four:

Giorgos Kaminis, current mayor of Athens and PASOK candidate.

First amongst them, and most likely to emerge as a winner, is current mayor and PASOK-backed candidate Giorgos Kaminis, a rather controversial figure. He has tried to defang the Golden Dawn in Athens by opposing their plans for handouts and direct actions in some ways, but has dealt with squats and demonstrations in a way that would find the neonazi party nodding in approval and who has a dramatic record in immigration, security and keeping the city clean. He nevertheless is a promise of stability and the first Sunday found him polling at 21.6%.

Gabriel Sakelarides, SYRIZA candidate.

His close opponent is the SYRIZA endorsed Gabriel Sakelaridis, a 33 year old economist, a face fresh and untarnished by old politics and corruption, but still a product of the same party mechanisms. He is often described as Tsipras’ likely successor. People who have interviewed him are shocked by the fact that “he is just a guy, a normal person, you know?”. He runs on a program that reflects much of SYRIZA’s general agenda and has gathered around him a rather young team looking to run not on a ‘law and order’ platform like most other candidates but an open and caring one. A voting percentage of 20% will see him through to the second round, where he will face off with Kaminis. But it’s two candidates that won’t be making it to the next round that are signs of dark times ahead for Greece.

Aris Spiliotopoulos, New Democracy candidate.

The lighter case is that of Aris Spiliotopoulos, the New Democracy backed candidate. While relatively young for the mostly aging party and coming from the more liberal wing of the greek conservatives, Spiliotopoulos opted to run on a very anti-immigration campaign, speaking about “cleaning up the city” of illegal trade and migrants, much like what the Golden Dawn has been promising. He vehemently opposed the proposed opening of a mosque in downtown Athens, claiming it would become an attraction for more immigration and a center of extremism. With borderline racist comments coming almost daily from his twitter account, Spiliotopoulos stood little chance against the already established Kaminis, who on an unofficial capacity enjoys the backing of Minister of Citizen Protection Nikos Dendias.

Illias Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn candidate.

Of course, when it comes to racism, he also had to go against the professionals: The Golden Dawn’s Illias Kasidiaris. This is the most troubling case of all, and let me start with the bad news: The Golden Dawn more than doubled its percentages in the city of Athens. From the 7.9% in the local elections of 2009 and the 6.7% in the general elections of 2012, more than 16% of voters cast their vote for Kasidiaris this time around.

This places him in the same percentage as the mainstream New Democracy candidate, despite the fact he is awaiting trial to face charges of forming and leading a criminal organisation and for breaching private data after he published a video from a meeting between himself and the New Democracy secretary Takis Baltakos that resulted in the resignation of the latter, shot with a hidden camera. Around Attica, the GD got 180,828+ votes, 11.13% of the the total. So, despite the proclamations of stability and a bright future for Greece that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras likes to make, the neonazi party is still going up in the polls.