After a gloomy summer for the left, marked by fires and the crushing defeat of Syriza, the main opposition party, in the last legislative elections at the end of June, the succession at its head from former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took a turn unexpected. Effie Achtsioglou, 38 years old, former minister of labor, moderate in her speech, was the favorite. And then, on August 29, Stefanos Kasselakis, until then little known to the general public, created a surprise by declaring himself a candidate for the presidency of the party, whose elections were organized on September 10 and 16.
On social networks, the 35-year-old former banker, with his shirt rolled up, presents himself in a clip with soft background music: “My name is Stefanos. I was born in 1988 (…), in a country where prime ministers come from political dynasties, and in a self-made family. » Picked up by all media, the video created a buzz, and the name “Kasselakis” became in the space of a few hours the most used hashtag on X (formerly Twitter) in Greece.
First openly homosexual candidate
Sportsman’s build, piercing blue eyes, the financier has a career that is out of the ordinary. At barely 14, he left for the United States. His father, majority shareholder of a shipping company, is experiencing financial difficulties. Stefanos Kasselakis says he left Greece ” by necessity “. Not only because of economic problems, but also because he was stifled in a conservative society where he was afraid to talk about his sexual orientation. The first openly homosexual candidate to want to lead a party, he presents in his candidacy video his American husband, Tyler McBeth, an emergency room nurse.
A brilliant student, Stefanos Kasselakis obtains a scholarship from Andreas Drakopoulos, director of the powerful foundation of the famous shipowner Stavros Niarchos, to study finance and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, while Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy and would soon have to ask for help from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Stefanos Kasselakis was recruited by Goldman Sachs as an analyst in commodity sales. .
The American bank is well known in Athens, since it helped Greece, according to journalistic investigations, to disguise its public accounts since 2001. Which led to the fall of the country. Faced with his left-wing detractors who accuse him of having rubbed shoulders with the financial world, Stefanos Kasselakis responds with confidence: “If I had not worked for capital, I would not have understood its arrogance and I would not be on the left today. » In 2014, he retrained in the merchant navy, an environment in which his family and loved ones operate.
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