ATHENS – A stunning one-week turnaround in a second round of French elections that saw an alliance of centrist and leftist parties finish ahead of far-right extremists who led the first round was applauded by Greece’s leftists dealing with dissension.

Major opposition SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis, who is being challenged within the party over his leadership, said that progressive forces in Greece should follow the lead of the left in France to beat back the far-right.

“The French people showed the way,” Kasselakis said, noting that French voters had “stood up against the monster of the far right and discredited neoliberalism, with a popular front imposed by society to oppose hatred and backwardness.”

He said the victory for France’s left that was shocked into working together demonstrated how Greece’s left can do the same although it has ruled out merging with the PASOK-KINAL center-left Socialists whose leader Nikos Androulakis is facing five challengers in October elections.

He said France’s combined left showed that despite differences they had agreed on measures to deal with a rising cost of living and housing shortage, protecting workers and pensioners and turning around voter dissatisfaction.

“In this way, they managed to prevail against the agenda of intolerance, anti-Europeanism and isolationism of the far right,” he said, although neither SYRIZA nor PASOK have made any real gains against the ruling New Democracy. .

Comparing this to the situation in Greece, Kasselakis noted that French voters “also showed that we must sit down in order to agree on finding solutions to the big problems that Greeks face today, such as high prices, the housing crisis, the destruction of the national health system, the failure of the rule of law.”

He added: “I am confident that we can set aside our various differences. Today the French people are ‘screaming.’ Hope and change are not a utopia but a reality. Let us hear them and let us not disappoint them in practice from now on.”

Androulakis didn’t react to Kasselakis’ overture but also welcomed the results in France and said it was, “A great victory for France and for Europe, a great victory of democracy,” but didn’t translate what it meant for him or Greece.

“With their mass participation in the elections, the French people raised walls against the far right, racism, intolerance and guarded the age-old values of French democracy: freedom, equality and brotherhood,” Androulakis also said.