ATHENS: Greece’s electoral court on Tuesday threw out of parliament the leader and two lawmakers of a small far-right party under investigation for vote fraud.
Spartans leader Vasilis Stigkas and two more MPs were expelled after the court accepted voter complaints that the real leader of the party was Ilias Kasidiaris, the jailed former spokesman of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
The ruling leaves the Greek parliament with 297 MPs instead of 300 for the first time in modern history.
The empty seats will not be redistributed among other parties and runners-up are also not allowed to take over the seats of the ousted MPs, the court said.
The far-right Spartans had already been blocked from participating in last June’s European Parliament elections.
Kasidiaris, an admirer of the Third Reich, had publicly endorsed the Spartans in 2023 national elections.
They ended up winning more than 240,000 votes and 12 seats in parliament, and Stigkas at the time publicly thanked Kasidiaris for “fuelling” their rise.
The ruling New Democracy party and the PASOK socialists had filed complaints at the Supreme Court, arguing that Kasidiaris is the “real” leader of the Spartans.
Last year Greece’s Supreme Court had separately prosecuted 11 lawmakers elected with the Spartans for electoral fraud.
Several Spartan lawmakers defected from the party after the prosecutions were announced.
Kasidiaris is serving a 13-year prison sentence with other leading members of Golden Dawn over crimes including the 2013 murder of an anti-fascist rapper.
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