THE LAOS PARTY
Sep 26th, 2007 by admin
The far right Orthodox Rally party, or Laos, gained enough votes to enter parliament for the first time after breaking the required three percent threshold and collecting 3.7% of the vote, or ten parliamentary seats. In the last elections they had 2.04%. This marked a significant change in the country’s politics as it is the first time that five parties enter parliament. It is also the first time in 30 years, and only the second in modern Greek history, that a far right party had gained parliamentary seats.
Does this mean the Greek public still has some fears and are uncomfortable with immigrants living in the country? Kathy tzilivakis of the Athens News:
It’s a bit of both and it is a Europe wide trend to see a rise in the far right ultra nationalist parties. In this case, Laos will use its ten seats in parliament to obviously exploit the anti-immigrant sentiments that we see from opinion polls in the Greek public. With the Conservative New Democracy party in power, we do see that the overall character of immigration legislation in Greece is very inflexible and restrictive, this has created a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration among immigrants. A lot still has to be said about the integration policy.