Stefanos Kasselakis: Who is the new leader of SYRIZA and the cohabitation agreement with his partner

With a 4:21 minute video, Stefanos Kasselakis announced his candidacy for the presidency SYRIZA. And he officially became the fifth person to officially enter the race for the leadership of the party.

In the video released by Stefanos Kasselakis, refers to himself, his life and describes the context of his positions and priorities for SYRIZA. While making a special mention of his partner, Tyler, with whom they have signed a cohabitation agreement in America.

The video for the announcement of his candidacy, which was given through social meida, has been edited by the well-known director, Nikos Soulis.

The SYRIZA presidential candidate says:

I was born in Maroussi in 1988.

In a country with hereditary prime ministers. In a family with self-made parents. My mother, a dentist, worked day and night to support my father while he started his company. Eventually the company grew and I found myself growing up in Ekali.

Except that this wealth was ultimately superficial – just like Greece’s.

The judicial circuit beat my parents and took everything they had and didn’t have.

So, at 14 I found myself alone in America. Not for luxury. Out of necessity. I was lucky that one of the oldest schools in the US gave me a full scholarship. And later, the Andreas Dracopoulos scholarship allowed me to attend the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2009, at the age of 21, in the midst of a financial crisis, I got a job at Goldman Sachs and saw firsthand what Capital is. To buy another’s labor cheaply. How much arrogance money brings.

That’s why I left this job. I got a loan with a personal guarantee, and three years later I managed to get into ocean shipping. Managed risk around the clock.

After much sweat, I took a big financial breath.

But there is another breath, far more important: It is the breath of freedom.

I met Tyler when I was 31. A nurse in the ICU, he stayed awake next to the patients, while he did his PhD in daylight. And as I had seen from my parents through thick and thin, when you find someone better than you, you do everything you can to keep them, no matter what others say.

I don’t have a gay agenda. I have a human agenda. With sentences that you read a few days ago, that others are afraid to say.

Privileges for the few and elite end, transparency everywhere, cuts to health, education, work, justice, separation of State and Church, abolition of compulsory service in the army.

I am aware that I have no party experience. My experience is in work and social life.

The candidacy I am now putting forward shows another path: From society, for society.

Several generations were lost. The time has come to build the Greek Dream that we so desperately need. With a state that ensures equality of opportunity. With a citizen whose future is not determined by where and how he was born.

For the Greek Dream to become a reality, we must defeat those who benefit from a Greece that is a barren field and not Europe in practice.

Do you want to put a self-made person against the heir Mitsotakis?

Do you want to pit the so-called excellent against a person who speaks better English than them, who has beaten them in math competitions and degrees?

Do you want to put against the Prime Minister of so-called financial stability a person who knows better finance and business than him, because he has worked and business?

Want to pit Greenberg’s staged Prime Minister against a person with empathy?

Do we want to put someone against Kyriakos Mitsotakis who will defeat him?

I have an appetite, I have absolutely no addiction, they can’t buy me, like they couldn’t buy Alexis.

My candidacy is radical. As is my life.

Let’s go together with a plan. The Greek Dream has not been lost. Not even SYRIZA. Time to be reborn. Time for SYRIZA to become a winner again. Time for the modern Left to act. Time to make every citizen proud”.

The confession about his partner

Stefanos Kasellakis in an interview he had given to Antivirus magazine he had spoken about his homosexuality, but also his partner Tyler.

Among other things, the new candidate for the leadership of SYRIZA had said:

“My first coming out was when I was 31, when I told Tyler. In America when you’re 31 and you’re coming out, they tell you ‘Oh my god, that’s late'”.

“Yes, it was the first time for me. As I told you, I had buried it as an issue. I was also in a relationship with a girl from 21 to 26, after university. I don’t identify as bi, it’s just that sometimes things are more fluid. But the older I got, the more I realized my orientation. In fact, the oxymoron was that I had a good relationship with the girl. So in 2019, I made the decision to ask for help and reach out to mental health professionals with experience in LGBTI+ issues.”

For meeting his partner

“I met Tyler. Let me also tell you how what tormented me for 16 years from Greece had already subsided. I had managed to achieve that stability that we lost when we left the country. I could now breathe and take care of myself. During that time I happened to meet Tyler. I ran into him in various places in New York. At the gym, at Starbucks, on the street, etc. After a certain phase when you start seeing a person so many times, you greet them. At one point we happened to be walking together leaving the gym. I didn’t know what to say and decided to put on my headphones. Then he touched me and asked if I lived in the neighborhood. And that’s how we started talking”, he had revealed.

He continued: “I wasn’t open about my sexuality at all when we met. But I saw a man a diamond in terms of heart and personality. At one point and after we hung out, I remember him trying to fish me out. He asked my opinion of the children. I told him that at some point I would like to. He then explained to me that in his case it’s something you have to plan well. I understood what he meant. “Why do you only talk about your case? And in my case” I answered. This was the first time I said it openly”.

As for how his family took it, Stefanos Kasselakis had explained in his interview: “I would say that by Greek standards it went exceptionally well. For American ones, not so much (laughs). The important thing is that they accepted it. My mother at first, although a professor at the dental school at UPENN with experience in diversity training, had the reaction of “OK, you’re going through a phase”. My father for 2-3 weeks simply did not want to talk about the issue. He didn’t want us to have any discussion about it. Fortunately, though, that didn’t last long. Since then, they adore Tyler, my mother wants nothing more than for us to have children and to be able to come and help us”..

As for whether a child is in their plans, he said: “We would really like it. We have made a cohabitation agreement in America and what we are planning now is to have children with a surrogate mother. But it saddens me that in America we can have children and a family that will not be recognized in Greece”.