Excluded from elections: Most parties to ND’s political right

Dear reader,

This is our weekly round-up from Greece.

Greece ranked 107th in the Reporters Without Borders annual index. With its score deteriorating, the country gained one place mainly due to Chad’s free fall. The government called RSF ‘unreliable.’ Then, the national news agency buried the news.

Two of the six journalists moderating the political election debate among party leaders are connected with kinship to ruling ND officials. Debate strict rules were set by an ‘inter-party committee’, with journalists not even allowed a free question. The government’s latest gift to mainstream TV channels was some 9 million euros because… of the Ukraine war.

Fourteen out of 50 parties who filed an application to run for elections were either banned from the Top Court or excluded because their application didn’t go through the Singular Logic electronic system, which manages the procedure. Most of them stand politically to the ND right. Also, this is the first time the elections procedure is managed by Singular Logic after the company had been bought by a decades-old friend of the Mitsotakis family, reports note. 

It’s official: Greece is worse by far as media freedom than Orban’s Hungary. 

Reporters Without Borders published this week their annual Media Freedom Index. Greece comes last of the EU countries, in a disgraceful 107th place (Abre numa nova janela), performing worse than countries such as Thailand, Qatar, Senegal, and Haiti. Interesting detail: Greece has been elevated one place (last year, the country featured 108th in the index). However, this was not due to improving its score, which slightly deteriorated (55.2 from 55.52). It was due to the vast deterioration of Chad’s ranking.