Greek leadership joined the international chorus of reaction over the weekend on the occasion of Cuban leader Fidel Castro passing, with statements by political leaders mostly mirroring their ideological foundations.
On his part, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose leftist SYRIZA party has been in power since January 2015, took to 21st century social media – specifically Twitter and Facebook -- to express his very warm and ideologically-tinged condolences.
On his personal Twitter account, Tsipras wrote, in Greek: “Goodbye commandante – until the forever victory of the peoples,” echoing the well-known phrase from the same-titled and iconic 1965 song "Hasta Siempre, Comandante".
Later on Facebook, Tsipras referred to the leader of the Cuban revolution, who was the “guarantor of decency and independence for his people”.
In a decidedly more subdued message, center-right main opposition New Democracy (ND) president Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted that Castro, 90, was undoubtedly a historic personality and a symbol of the Cuban revolution amid an era of hardline international conflict (i.e. the Cold War), “something that now belongs in the past”.
The pro-reform and free market advocate added: “His (Castro’s) course nevertheless confirmed the fact that progress without economic and political freedom cannot exist.”
As expected, Greece’s orthodox Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (KKE) issued a press release stating that “Fidel Castro leaves behind a political legacy to the international communist movement, and particularly the Cuban people, in the struggle it is waging today against the American embargo, which is continuing.”
Socialist PASOK party’s Fofi Gennimata offered a more neutral assessment, saying that the Cuban leader, who ruled unopposed for five decades, influenced an entire period of history, “struggling for his ideas and becoming an international symbol.”
“History cannot bypass him; it will judge him, far removed from idealization or demonization,” she said in a short social media post.
Finally, Greek president Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the head of state, expressed his condolences to Fidel Castro’s successor, his brother Raul, and to the Cuban people.
Pavlopoulos’ message referred to a “distinguished personality of the 20th century, whose influence was felt for decades in the wider region (of Latin America).”
