Greek political smackdown on live TV as extreme right figure punches female rival
A Greek politician is being hunted by police after the country's election campaign turned into an ugly brawl on live TV.
The spokesman of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, after trading insults of "commie" and "fascist" with two left-wing politicians, lunged at the women, smacking one three times across the face and throwing a glass of water at another...
...A prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Ilias Kasidiaris, whose party alarmed Europe by gaining 21 of parliament's 300 seats in Greece's inconclusive May 6 elections.
Golden Dawn, which vehemently denies the neo-Nazi label, has been accused of violent attacks against immigrants in Athens.
The party denies involvement in the attacks, insisting it is a nationalist patriotic group...
...It campaigned on a platform of ridding the country of illegal immigrants and cleaning up crime-ridden neighbourhoods, and advocates planting anti-personnel mines along Greece's borders to stop migrants from sneaking across.
The attack "put on public display what was widely known", said the radical left-wing Syriza party, whose member Rena Dourou was splashed with water on the show. "The true face of this criminal organisation."
Discussion went off on a tangent about political history in Greece, which suffered a vicious civil war between Communists and the right-wing after World War II, and a seven-year military dictatorship that ended in 1974.
Kasidiaris shot an insult of "you old Commie" at 58-year-old prominent Communist Party member Liana Kanelli, after she called him a "fascist".
Kasidiaris, 31, also took offence at a reference by Dourou to a court case pending against him.
It all careened into violence when Dourou said there was a "crisis of democracy when people who will take the country back 500 years have got into the Greek parliament".
Kasidiaris bounded out of his seat and hurled a glass of water at her, shouting an insult: "You circus act."
Talk show host Giorgos Papadakis ran over to Kasidiaris, attempting to calm him down. But he turned on Kanelli, who appeared to throw a newspaper at him.
Kasidiaris hit Kanelli three times - with hard right-left-right slaps to the sides of her head.
Papadakis tried and failed to restrain him.
The channel cut to a commercial break, and returned five minutes later without Kasidiaris.
Papadakis and Kanelli later said attempts had been made to restrain Kasidiaris after the scuffle by shutting him in a room in the TV channel's building, but he broke through the door and left...
http://www.theage.com.au/world/greek-political-smackdown-on-live-tv-as-extreme-r...