One to watch - 31/05/2009
Niki Tzavella, Greece
By Amanda Morrow/RFI
Niki Tzavella is leading the ticket for Greece's right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally, which managed to win one seat in the European Parliament after the 2004 elections.
Abbreviated to LAOS, as a pun on the Greek word for people, the populist party was founded by its current leader Georgios Karatzaferis in 2000 following his expulsion from the centre-right New Democracy party. LAOS is strongly nationalistic and anti-immigration, and has attracted accusations of anti-Semitism.
Tzavella, an economist who worked on bringing the Olympic Games to Athens, studied in various European countries and at Howard University in the United States, and has been an advisor to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is a former MP for the ruling New Democracy party, which she left after LAOS's founder Georgios Karatzaferis was expelled from the party.
LAOS secured support from the Party of Hellenism and the Hellenic Women's Political Party before the last EU elections, and in 2005 it went on to absorb the equally xenophobic far-right nationalist Hellenic Front. Campaigning on the slogan "We were once great and we will be great again", it took 3.8 per cent of the vote in Greece's 2007 elections, making history with the election of 10 members to parliament - effectively holding the balance of power.
Forging ahead with the same party slogan, LAOS's target for this week's poll is 4.2 per cent - in line with the 4.1 per cent in secured in the 2004 European elections.
Other candidates to watch:
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Eva Joly  |
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