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Drassi did not enter the Parliament, but gained popularity

27 July 2012 / 22:07:33  GRReporter
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I would not say that Drasi should be necessarily considered as part of the centre-right space. Our party is reformist, above all. We created it in 2009 with preciesly this request: that major reforms to be carried out, at a time when most people didn't see the country's problems.

Many of us, including Stefanos Manos, are right centrists. But ever since the founding of the party, left centrists have been participating in it as well. People who are interested in the environment and others who are interested in realism and the essence of things. So I would define Drassi as a "new centre" or reformist party.

The most important thing for us is that the elections provided us the opportunity to spread throughout the country. So far we have been an "Athenian" party. The explanation for this is that everybody knew mainly Stefanos Manos, whose political activity has always been associated with the capital city and the central political arena. So far, we have participated twice in the European Parliament elections, but these are "easy" elections, which do not require to have candidates at a local level. It was therefore much more logical for the party to be strong in Athens. If we had the same success in the country we would have won 4 per cent of the votes. We just didn't have presence in the province, while in the large urban centres we received the highest number of votes. The elections have helped us in this regard. We already have representatives throughout the country, they are becoming well-known in their regions and we hope that this will have a good influence in the future.

You said that an opposing political formation should be created. The centre-right political space in Greece is in a crisis. Before the elections there was an attempt a front to be created, which, however, wasn't successful. Do you think the centre-right forces are able to achieve such an ally?

Before the election we decided to enter into coalition with other political formations, similar to us. It was the Democratic Alliance of Dora Bakoyannis - a liberal party, which declared itself openly pro reforms. We have had many opportunities to achieve a union because a lot of things connected us, but in the end we didn’t manage to carry cooperation into effect.

The other option for a coalition was with the party "ReCreate Greece", which was new and we didn't know what exactly it was like. Communication was not easy, but eventually we managed to enter into coalition.

Of course, another partner was the Liberal Alliance, which is a smaller but more politicized party. We managed to enter into coalition with them, we participated together in the elections and we are still closely related.

I do not think, however, that the elections were a problem of the centre-right. As I have already said, voters did not vote with a political criterion. There were many traditional supporters of New Democracy, who voted for SYRIZA. As well as leftists who voted for New Democracy so that SYRIZA would not win, because they feared that the irresponsible position of the radical left would cause Greece's exit from the eurozone.

Anyway, I do not think the problem in Greece is ideological. There are many people from all political spaces, who realize that reforms have to be made. There are others who want the situation from several years ago to be preserved and maybe they don't understand that this isn't possible because there are no resources for this. In my opinion, this is the great division in Greek society.

Despite the expectations your party coalition with "ReCreate Greece" in the second elections failed to enter the Parliament. What do you think this failure is due to?

Look, the sum of the results from the first elections was simple: Together with "ReCreate Greece" we would have reached 4 per cent. But the polarization between New Democracy and SYRIZA was very strong. From the very beginning we knew that many of our supporters were determined to vote for New Democracy, without this meaning that they were getting away from us. They lent their vote to New Democracy, for the sole purpose of SYRIZA not to win.

In addition, cooperation wasn't smooth, but gradually we overcame problems. It turned out that in this new party, there are many and different opinions. Some of its participants fully supported our position, while others had serious reservations. Some were simply attracted by the slogan "politics without politicians", which I do not understand. Because from the very moment Thanos Dzimeros entered the elections and won 2.15 per cent of the votes, he started being considered a politician.

We regret the cooperation in no case, although we found differences on many issues: immigration, human rights and others. However, it was in the right direction because we managed to keep alive a small, but reformist centrist space, where there is also the largest gap in Greek politics, which is now moving from one extreme to the other.

To which social circle do Darsi's supporters belong?

I can not say exactly, because their number is not large, and we haven't had the ability to fund more extensive research in this direction. The election results indicate, however, that support is higher among the better educated and those with good financial standing, as well as among young people. Older and retired people are the smallest part of our voters. Generally, I would say that our supporters come mainly from the bourgeois part of society.

Tags: Politics political centre party Drassi Antipas Karipoglоu election coalition Stefanos Manos
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