Vasileios "Vasilis" Leventis ( el, Βασίλειος "Βασίλης" Λεβέντης, ; born 2 November 1951) is a Greek politician, leader of the Greek centrist party,

Union of Centrists The Union of Centrists ( el, Ένωση Κεντρώων, Énosi Kentróon, ) is a centrist, liberal political party in Greece. The leader and founder of the party is the veteran anti-corruption activist Vassilis Leventis. It strongly supports Gr ...

() since 1992 and former Member of Parliament, in office 2015 to 2019.

Early life

Vassilis Leventis is the fourth child of Apostolos and Gregoria Leventis who were originally from Korakovouni, a small village in

Arcadia Arcadia may refer to: Places Australia * Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney * Arcadia, Queensland * Arcadia, Victoria Greece * Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese * Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...

. The Leventis family moved to

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; el, Πειραιάς ; grc, Πειραιεύς ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens' city centre, along the east coast of the Saronic ...

where Vassilis Leventis graduated from high school and in 1969 he was admitted as the 6th highest-ranking candidate, to the

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage ...

department of the

National Technical University of Athens The National (Metsovian) Technical University of Athens (NTUA; el, Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο, ''National Metsovian Polytechnic''), sometimes known as Athens Polytechnic, is among the oldest higher education institution ...

. During the '70s he ventured into discography, himself funding and producing a one time record. His first involvement with politics occurred in 1975 when, as an assistant of the then dean of the Athens Polytechnic University, Kyprianos Biris, he contributed in composing articles 21 and 24 of the Greek Constitution and also participated in forming the DEPOS project. He is fluent in German and has adequate understanding of the English language.

Political career

Vassilis Leventis started his political career in 1974 as a founding father and later MP candidate of

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement ( el, Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα, Panellínio Sosialistikó Kínima, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK, (; , ) is a social-democratic political party in Greece. Until 2012, it ...

. After 1981, he expressed many disagreements with the party, blaming it for a divergence from its original views. In 1982, he was a candidate for mayor of

. In 1984, he founded the first ecological party in Greece, which participated in the European Elections of the same year, gaining only 0.15% of the vote. In 1986, he stood for the office of mayor of

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

gaining 0.57% of the vote. In the national legislative election of 1989, he was a candidate with the

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a concept based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in Chinese Communist Revolution, post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path ...

party but failed to get elected. In 1990, he founded the television channel ''Channel 67'', which was renamed in 1993 to ''Channel 40: Social and Ecological Television of Greece'' due to transfer of the channel's frequency to 40 UHF. The channel was sold in late 2000 to publisher George Kouris, and was then renamed ''Extra Channel'' on January 8, 2001; it was later sold again to entrepreneur Phillip Vriones and was renamed ''Extra Channel 3'' in August 2003. Leventis himself hosted from 2000 until 2016 a political show on the channel, titled ''Politikos Marathonis'', which was broadcast on a weekly basis. In a 1992 congress, he decided to found the

, which strove to become "the political continuance of the centrist expression in Greece". Leventis aimed to become part of the legacy of some great politicians of the past, such as

Eleftherios Venizelos Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos ( el, Ελευθέριος Κυριάκου Βενιζέλος, translit=Elefthérios Kyriákou Venizélos, ; – 18 March 1936) was a Greek statesman and a prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movem ...

and

Georgios Papandreou Georgios Papandreou ( ''Geórgios Papandréou''; 13 February 1888 – 1 November 1968) was a Greek politician, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty. He served three terms as prime minister of Greece (1944–1945, 1963, 1964–196 ...

. However, until 2015, the party's influence was marginal, with 1.79% of the total vote in the January 2015 legislative election being its highest share, not securing entry to parliament. In the September 2015 legislative election the party cleared the 3% threshold in the Greek parliament after it won 186,457 votes (3.43%), electing 9 MPs.

Political views

Vasilis Leventis expresses his political opinion through his ''Antidiaplokí'' (Αντιδιαπλοκή, ''anti-corruption'') quarterly newspaper and his TV show that has been hosted in several stations so far, such as PellaTV and Extra Channel. His views are placed in the center of the political spectrum with particular emphasis on policies that are "rational", transparent, squarely opposed to

corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...

, in favor of the weaker social classes (

workers The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic regio ...

pensioner A pensioner is a person who receives a pension, most commonly because of retirement from the workforce. This is a term typically used in the United Kingdom (along with OAP, initialism of old-age pensioner), Ireland and Australia where someone of p ...

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mig ...

single parent A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include divorce, break-up, abandonment, becoming wid ...

s, etc.), hostile to the concentration of

power Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may a ...

in just a few individuals and

reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill#The Yorkshire Associati ...

of the Greek political life. Leventis himself is unreservedly and nearly polemically critical of mainstream Greek political parties and their leaders. He asserts that Greek politicians are in league with big business interests who control the mainstream media and as a result of this criticism he has been deliberately excluded from publicity, which in his opinion, is the factor that has caused his party to exist only in the margins of Greek politics. His frequent use of expletives and his animated style of speaking have led him often to be the object of

joke A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...

s at his expense, but have also elevated some snippets of his TV shows to cult status. Leventis proposes the cutting of double and triple pensions, to cut the pensions of those who have an income of 3,000 euro from other sources, to fire the 1,500 officials of the Parliament and the public workers who do not do their job. Vassilis Leventis's general public acknowledgment has risen during 2014 and 2015 due to a viral video montage, following his so-called "prophecies", that accurately predict Greece's current financial crisis, from as early as 1993.

Citations and notes

External links

Union of Centrists
– Official website {{DEFAULTSORT:Leventis, Vassilis 1951 births Living people National Technical University of Athens alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Greek MPs 2015–2019 People from Messini