Non-Greek citizens -who do not have Greek citizenship- and are legally living in the country as well as Greeks living abroad can no longer vote and stand as candidates in local and regional elections, according to a legislative amendment submitted in Parliament by Interior Minister Yiannis Michelakis. The move abides by a decision from the Council of State in 2013 -Greece’s highest administrative court- which notes that the Constitution grants the right to vote and stand as a candidate in elections to Greek citizens only. The ruling emphasises that this right cannot be extended to others unless there is a constitutional review first.
In other words, a Greek American living in Greece but who does not have Greek citizenship would be debarred from voting. (Which makes a lot of sense, because you need citizenship to vote in any country!)
Under a 2010 act, commonly known as the Ragousis law, introduced by the then PASOK government, 12,574 foreigners received the right to vote in local elections. Of these, 9,927 were third-country nationals and 2,647 were expatriates (and they were not Greek citizens!).
The new law also clearly states that citizens of countries in the European Free Trade Area – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland – who are legal residents in Greece are also revoked of their right to vote and to stand as a candidates in elections -even if they are not Greek citizens-.
The decision, however, was not received well by various immigrant organizations across Greece and it prompted them to organize anti-racist protests. As such, a demonstration would be held on Tuesday afternoon at 7pm outside parliament. Reports said that the groups taking part in this protest demand that the government withdraw the amendment immediately and restore the right for everyone residing permanently in the country to vote as well as stand as a candidate in the upcoming municipal elections.
Obviously this is a ridiculous demand, because most of the people taking part in these demonstrations are illegal immigrants and therefore do not have the same constitutional rights as Greek nationals do. Besides, the government was only following an order by the Council of State, which is Greece's highest ranking judicial authority.
But try explaining this to these people. They claim that the the amendment is “another gift of Samaras to the Golden Dawn” party and stress that government policies are increasingly becoming racist. They even had the audacity -even though evidence has proved otherwise- to speak about the responsibilities of the Greek state in the Farmakonisi tragedy a few weeks ago. What is even more insulting is that they also speak about assaults on migrant workers and never once acknowledge that more than 60 percent of Greek jails are full of foreigners -who were arrested for crimes against the Greek state and the Greek people-!
The demonstration on Tuesday-evening is being supported by the “Unity” Pakistani Community of Greece, the Bangladeshi Chamber of Athens, the Afghan Migrant and Refugee Community, the Allied Afghan Refugee Association, Asante, the Nigerian Community, the Senegalese Community, the Egyptian Community, the Syrian Expatriates of Greece Association, the Hellenic Federation of Albanian Migrants, the Migrant Workers Union and anti-fascist and anti-racist movement KEERFA.
In a statement, Democratic Left (DIMAR) called on PASOK, now the junior coalition partner, to vote against the amendment because it would overturn a law that it had introduced.
"Immigrants who live and work legally in our country cannot be treated as second-class citizens. Parties who do not want the extreme-right agenda to dominate public life – in particular PASOK, which introduced the law [giving foreigners the vote] – must vote against the amendment."On its part SYRIZA said the filing of the amendment "deprives Greek diaspora and third-country nationals legally residing in Greece of the right to vote in municipal elections and is part of a far-right agenda of the Samaras government."
(Kind of a ridiculous and hypocritical statement from the Left, because the Greek Diaspora has always been deprived of voting in the national elections of Greece because the Left does not permit this law to pass through parliament!)
On its part, PASOK said that in order for foreigners to participate in elections, there needs to be a solid legal framework so that there is "no danger of the elections being declared null and void by the Council of State".
Speaking about elections, the government's decision to promote a change in the electoral law for the European elections, so that MEPs will be elected with a cross and not with a list, is apparently souring the main opposition party SYRIZA. The far leftist party believes that changing the electoral law is another last minute trick, so the two coalition parties can limit their defeat in the European elections which are set to occur right after the local elections.
As stated in a relevant announcement, SYRIZA believes that ND and PASOK are "actually looking for personal armies of parliamentary candidates who will engage in the battle of the cross to rescue a government that is collapsing under the weight of its failure."
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