PROBLEM

We said yesterday that Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias is campaigning with one eye outside of Greece. In recent days, he has become a central figure in Serbia. In fact, his colleague Ivica Dacic has left thorns against Mr. Dendias for deviating from the policy of supporting Serbia’s territorial integrity, as the prime minister and president of the republic have expressed. Vasilisa Sofya has an understanding of the annoyance of the Serbs. This is because Greece abstained from voting on Kosovo’s request to join the Council of Europe. Abstinence is understandable, authorities say. To maintain its role as an honest broker between Pristina and Belgrade, Athens had to remain neutral.

ACCIDENT

As you know, for the first time 420,000 young people aged 17 to 21 are invited to vote. Youth voting is perhaps the most difficult equation ahead of the May 21 elections, as it affects a potentially significant percentage of the electorate. Among voters younger than 29, there are noticeable trends. In a recent Opinion Poll for The Toc, SYRIZA (20.5%) ranked first with N.D. (18.5%), third place MeRA25 (8.6%), fourth PASOK (7.5%), fifth Kasidiaris (6.4%), sixth KKE (6.3%) and seventh Greek solution (3, 8%). Of course, this is only one poll, but in general, other measurements show that young people vote for small and “anti-systemic” parties. No one knows what will happen in the second round of elections that will follow the highly likely event of a stalemate on May 21, but there will be uncertainty anyway.

FACE

Anastasios Kanellopoulos, a former deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court who is also the chairman of the party that survived the crisis of the Supreme Court, in which he served as an acting judge, has been the face of EAN so far. A visit to the EAN website and the language model used for various, shall we say, partisan texts leaves no doubt about its nature: it is all it takes to accommodate a wide variety of people craving some attention and visibility. Therefore, it is not at all paradoxical that two people corresponding to this category declared their membership in the EAN. First of all, the longtime favorite child of Giorgos Karatsaferis in the glorious days of LAOS and the meter of the midnight belt Kostas Aivaliotis. Vassilis Paiteris, a well-known musician, is also a member of EAN, who seems to have a desire to be elected. Paiteris went through a full party cycle, starting in 1993 as the candidate of Antonis Samaras “Political Spring”, then following his political dream in Dimitris Tsovol’s DIKKI and of course in the mainstream PASOK, ND, SYRIZA. That the far-right vote would lead to comical outbursts that Monty Python wouldn’t even dare to think about is surprising only to the uninitiated.

PLACE

Tavern “Kritikos” in Keratsini. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was there yesterday, where, among other things, he participated in a very important business of the owners of Kritikos – providing our fellow citizens with free food. On this occasion, Mr. Mitsotakis helped prepare yesterday’s meal and praised the efforts of the Kritikos staff. “There are problems in the world, and we all have to turn our backs in every possible way,” said the prime minister, who continued his tour of the Piraeus II regions. The appearance of the prime minister in Kritiko was, of course, a good opportunity for respite for Alexis Tsipras, who a few days ago was in Drapezon, from where he accused Kyriakos Mitsotakis of being comfortable only in Glyfada and Kifisia. These lines are so generic that they remind me of a gramophone from a (very) old Greek movie.

ATTACK

“Mr. Tsipras is obligated to tell us what he meant when he said after meeting with Chancellor Soltz that if there is leadership in Turkey, he will try to commit Aegean Prespes. Because if he considers the Prespan agreement successful, where the country is called North Macedonia, but the language of the neighboring people is Macedonian and the Macedonians themselves, then we should probably be very careful about what we vote for on May 21, so as not to live in the Aegean sea”. Yet the announcement was made by PASOK President Nikos Androulakis, who is nationally very far from SYRIZA.