ATHENS: Greece's election campaign warmed up on Thursday as the conservatives released a new alarmist campaign ad and police sought a neo-Nazi MP over an assault of two female lawmakers live on TV.
Ten days before elections that could herald Greece's exit from the eurozone, a television advertisement from the New Democracy party set in the future showed school children asking their teacher why they were no longer in the currency zone.
“Greece needs a party that is responsible,” the gloomy advert concludes.
It forms part of New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras's attempt to prevent a repeat of the last elections on May 6 when some 70 per cent of voters supported parties opposed to more austerity measures.
One of the parties that did well on May 6 was Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn), a neo-Nazi party whose leader Nikos Michaloliakos has denied there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and has whipped up anti-immigrant feeling.
Six days after two of its MPs were briefly detained by police over an assault on a Pakistani man, television images showed its spokesman and lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris assaulting two leftist MPs during a live debate on Thursday.
Athens prosecutors have ordered the arrest of the MP, Ilias Kasidiaris, for alleged attempted grievous bodily harm after the images showed him hitting female communist lawmaker Liana Kanelli three times in the face.
The incident shows Kasidiaris throwing a glass of water at Rena Dourou from the leftist Syriza party before slapping and punching Kanelli.
Kasidiaris later phoned the television channel, accusing Kanelli of having assaulted him first and saying that the channel had doctored the images.
Kasidiaris is also involved in a court case due to resume Monday over a brutal 2007 mugging.—AFP





























