Olympic Champ Dimas on PASOK Ticket, Lambrakis to New Democracy

ATHENS – Still lagging in the polls as the May 6 elections approach, the PASOK Socialist party has recruited former Olympic and World Champion weightlifter Pyrros Dimas, who had vowed he would never be involved in politics, to head its list of candidates to the Parliament. The New Democracy Conservatives countered with Theodoros Lambrakis to be on its ticket.
Theodoros is the son of Grigoris Lambrakis, a famous and popular leftist who was an anti-Fascist icon assassinated in 1963 by Right-Wing extremists after a rally in Thessaloniki. G. Lambrakis was hit on the head with a club in full view of a large crowd and police did nothing to stop it. Investigations later linked the police to the extremists, but few were held accountable. The movie “Z,” from the popular book by Vassilis Vassilikos, was based on him.
With surveys showing that PASOK and New Democracy are floundering because of their support for austerity measures that have cut deep into the lifestyle of working-class Greeks and impoverished many, they are frantically trying to slow their slide any way they can. Dimas, who was born in Albania to ethnic Greek parents, is a popular sports celebrity and highly regarded because he had avoided politics. There was no word on whether he supports the pay cuts, tax hikes, and slashed pensions foisted on Greeks by the current PASOK-New Democracy shaky hybrid government being overseen by former European Central Bank Vice-President Lucas Papademos.
The list, which comprises candidates who are not elected directly but according to the percentage that their party gains in the polls, often include eminent personalities who are not career politicians, a move designed to garner support even though the candidates have virtually no qualification for public office.
Dimas took the gold in Barcelona in 1992, Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, as well as the bronze at the Athens Games in 2004. There has been speculation in the past that Dimas would run with the Socialist party despite his promise to stay out of politics. PASOK is running in second place now with about 14 percent, compared to 20 percent for New Democracy. With neither party having enough support to win outright, they would either have to form another coalition of ideological rivals or elections could be called again.
Theodoros Lambrakis was a candidate in 2010 municipal elections in the neighborhood of Halandri. “I’m independent. I never belonged to a political party, I’m a free citizen,” he said. “Let alone that I hate the racism of characterization, right-wing, Communist, and PASOK followers,” he added.
In an interview with the newspaper To Vima in 2010, he said: “My father wasn’t a Communist either. He worked together with EDA (United Democratic Left.) He was a free man, he was a democrat. There are good and bad Communists, there are good and bad Right-Wingers. It all has to do with the person. If he’s fair, right, if he’s correct, it doesn’t matter what political party he supports.” He didn’t say why he now joined a Right-Wing Conservative group that is antithetical to all that his father stood for.
(Source: Kathimerini)