Conservative New Democracy leader Vangelis Meimarakis on Wednesday evening aimed his message at a demographic group where he’s lagging behind rival leftist Alexis Tsipras: the younger generation.

Speaking in an auditorium in Athens’ “Soho-esque” Gazi district, Meimarakis warned against abstention in Sunday’s election, a prospect that worries both front-running parties.

“I urge you to seek out your peers and persuade them to vote,” he said.

In a decidedly “ideological pivot”, moreover, the conservative leader referred to “leftist myths”, saying left regimes have traditionally harmed the weaker social groups more than others.

“A grand leftist myth is free higher education,” he said, adding that he is an ardent supporter of allowing non-profit, non-state universities to finally be established in Greece.

The country is one of the few — if not the only one — in the developed world that prohibits, by a constitutional article no less, the establishment of universities outside state control.

 Tsipras

At the same time, SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras spoke to supporters in the western port city of Patras, where he repeated one of the main slogans of his campaign, stressing that “…in Sunday’s election we vote no to the re-establishment of the old regime of subjugation, paternalism, corruption and vested interests.”

Tsipras also called the snap election he engineered for Sept. 20 a “second major referendum for the future of our people and land.”