Liana Kanelli

Who is Liana Kanelli?

Garyfallia Kanelli, in Greek Γαρυφαλλιά Κανέλλη, is a Greek journalist and Member of the Greek Parliament for the Communist Party of Greece since 2000.

She studied law at the University of Athens. In 1975, starting her career in journalism, she was acclaimed by Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis as the "kid of New Democracy", a designation she herself denied a while later.

In the next decades Kanelli worked as daily columnist, reporter at home and on missions abroad, news anchor, broadcaster, television presenter and interviewer to evolve by time into a kind of a Greek "Barbara Walters". Often played the role of media polemicist, she is noted for her forthright, irreverent, incisive and arrogant style of talking criticised or applauded by either party of the viewers.

In 1999, Kanelli announced from the podium of a rally protesting the Kosovo War and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that she would run as a candidate for the Communist Party of Greece for the European Parliament. In the 2000 national election she was firstly elected as Member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens' first electoral district, and has secured a seat in all the next elections of 2004, 2007 and 2009.