1992 Athens B by-election
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The 1992 Athens B by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 5 April 1992, for the Hellenic Parliament constituency of Athens B.
Dimitris Tsovolas, then a PASOK MP for Athens B, was sentenced to a suspended prison term of 2.5 years by the Special Court (Ministers' Council) for the Koskotas scandal and to an additional penalty of deprivation of political rights (amounting to disfranchisement and disqualification) at which point he was removed from his parliamentary seat. In protest against what they considered to be the unfair trial and conviction of Tsovolas, the PASOK runners-up, who according to the Constitution would take his place, refused to be sworn in as MPs until their number (18) was exhausted. According to the law, by-elections were thus to be called for this one seat.
New Democracy, either to avoid being accused of further politicizing the trial and conviction of Tsovolas, i.e., that it sought his conviction in order to gain an additional seat in parliament (as it had a narrow majority of only 152 MPs), or to avoid a major defeat, decided not to participate in these elections. The Communist Party, Synaspismos, and Democratic Renewal also abstained from these elections.
With all major parliamentary parties essentially deciding not to disrupt the status quo, and let PASOK retain the seat, it was up to smaller parties to contest the by-election.
Participating alongside PASOK were the Union of Centrists, the National Political Union, Popular Unions of Non-Partisan Social Groups (with the tongue-in-cheek acronym ΛΕΥΚΟ, i.e. white/blank vote) and the Ecological Union.
The obvious runner up was the Union of Centrists, with its leader, Vasilis Leventis, standing in for the election. Leventis, who had a regional television channel in Attica (Channel 67, later Channel 40), had already created a sensational climate around his candidature with his phone-in show, attracting various attitudes during political rallies ranging from mocking, to an alleged assassination attempt in Kallithea.[1][2] The seat was ultimately won by PASOK's Georgios-Alexandros Mangakis, by a large margin of 282,779 votes more than Leventis. The result seemed equally redeeming for Leventis, who, having founded the party just a month earlier and having only garnered 3,360 votes (under his previous party instance, Ecologists Pacifists Greens) in the 1990 parliamentary election, saw an increase of 3320.18% in his electoral results. This, however, can possibly be attributed to ND and other parties' voters voting for Leventis so that the seat would not go handily to PASOK.[3]