Zoe Konstantopoulou’s Course for Freedom party has never performed so well.
The latest polls rank it as the second-most-popular political party, with 15.2% of the Greek populace listing it as their preference, just behind the governing New Democracy party.
The left-wing yet hard-to-pin-down Course for Freedom, founded with the goal of “overthrowing the memorandum regime and the establishment as a whole” entered parliament with just 3.17% of the national vote in June 2023.
But over the past few weeks the party has benefitted from a precipitous collapse of public trust in the government amidst the ongoing reverberations of the Tempi tragedy and party leader Konstantopoulou’s insistent, vocal focus of the issue on the parliament floor. In the last month alone, Konstantopoulou has made headlines at least thrice as she engaged in spats about Tempi with other MPs.
“The idea of her party being some sort of disruptor, a force that brings justice or at least very harshly speaks against the government, I think now based on the mood of the Greek electorate, that moves in her favor,” said George Giannakopoulos, a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of London, and member of the Political Studies Association’s Greek Politics Specialist Group.
As a party, Course for Freedom was founded by and is structured around the figure of Konstantopoulou. It is a party that is her party, and it cannot be understood without understanding her.
Outspoken, argumentative, often abrasive, Zoe Konstantopoulou entered Greece’s political scene young and with a splash. She represented the family of Alexis Grigoropoulos, the teenager killed by a police officer in December 2008 that unleashed a firestorm of protests across the country. She was then elected to the Greek parliament with SYRIZA in 2012, at the age of 36.
She started her parliamentary career with the publication of a “Black Book of Shame” listing names and those involved with alleged political scandals. Then when SYRIZA swept into governing in 2015, party leader Alexis Tsipras nominated her as speaker of the parliament, making her the youngest person to hold the position in Greece.
In her time as speaker Konstantopoulou railed against corruption in the Greek political system, and argued the country’s debt should be written off. She was widely criticized for throwing the rules and procedures of parliament out the window, and some accused her of pandering to neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn by insisting they be present for parliamentary votes despite several members being held in pre-trial detention. As written in To Vima’s magazine in 2015, “There were many moments in 2015 when all of Greece was talking about Zoe, and not without reason.”
But most characteristically, Konstantopoulou was vocally in support of the “no” vote in the 2015 referendum, a vote against the bailout conditions set by the troika creditors. When SYRIZA famously then took an about-turn and agreed to the terms of the bailout, against the “no” vote of the Greek populace, Konstantopoulou ostentatiously left the party. “What is certain is that a betrayal has taken place, both of the people and of the popular mandate,” she stated in an interview at the time.
Konstantopoulou then formed Course for Freedom in 2016, a splinter party focused largely on protesting the memoranda. “It presented itself as a party somewhat beyond right or left but having a grounding in left-wing politics,” said Giannakopoulos. “It’s a party that wants to be an anti-establishment party, that speaks the language of freedom and progress, that puts it in the left wing spectrum. It’s also a party that has in its DNA the trauma–if you will– of the 2015-2016 so-called surrender.”
Since entering parliament in 2023 with Course for Freedom Konstantopoulou has continued her outspoken, brash approach to parliamentary politics. She is not afraid of naming and blaming other politicians for alleged corruption, cover-up, or malfeasance. This modus operandi has only continued with the ongoing outrage over the Tempi train crash, and the allegations of cover-up.
Konstantopoulou has stated that the government “did not respect the dead” in the Tempi train crash and “threw them away to an unknown place”. She has shouted over denials of wrongdoing, and pointedly blamed government officials by name, stating they have “blood on their hands”. She told the government spokesperson that “the overwhelming majority of people hold you responsible for a cover-up.” She asserted that there are “57 reasons” for the Prime Minister to resign (based on the 57 lives lost in the accident) and proceeded to list them on the parliament floor.
At a moment when the Greek public is roiled by rage in regards to the Tempi tragedy, it seems Konstantopoulou’s approach is falling on welcome ears. Recent polls show that 71.9% of the Greek public believe there has been a cover-up in the Tempi investigation. An overwhelming 85% of Greeks blame the government for the incident, and 86.2% believe government officials should face criminal proceedings. The last few weeks have seen record-breaking protests across the country, by far the largest since the tough years of 2015. At the same time, Course for Freedom has been climbing in the polls.
“One might say that, regardless of how one feels about Konstantopoulou as a character or political figure, she has managed to create this personalistic party that, amid the collapse of the traditional left-wing and the rise of various right-wing formations, seems to be doing well in the polls,” explained Giannakopoulos. “This is a short-term phenomenon, but it reflects a certain agony within the electorate. The way I understand it, the impact of Tempi and this particular event has been felt politically—there is widespread sentiment of dissatisfaction and anger, and she expresses herself in a way that, I think, resonates with people right now.”
