Aleka Papariga, the former General Secretary of the Party's Central Committee, has been placed first in the Communist Party of Greece's (KKE) nationwide list of candidates for the upcoming general elections of July 7th.
Born in 1945, Papariga has served as General Secretary from 1991 to 2013, thus being the first woman to head a major political party in Greece. Born in a family of National Resistance fighters and Communist Party members, Aleka Papariga became active in the peace and women's movements during the 1960s and 70s.
A hard working cadre of the KKE, highly committed to the ideals of marxism-leninism, she became a member of the Central Committee in 1978 and member of the Political Bureau in 1986.
On 27 February 1991, at the 13th Party Congress, she was elected General Secretary of the KKE. Aleka Papariga played a leading role in the struggle against the splitting opportunist forces ("Synaspismos") which had attempted to dissolve the KKE in the beginning of the 1990s. Since then, she has contributed significantly to the development and consolidation of the KKE's revolutionary theory and political line.
She has been a Member of the Greek Parliament since 1993.
According to 902 portal, the 12th - "honorary"- position in the Party's nationwide list of candidates will be taken by Thanos Mikroutsikos, one of Greece's most promiment music composers of the last decades.
