Greece shows the memory of its disaster at the polls
This time it didn't work. The Greeks did not believe the promises of change, wine and roses that the Syriza candidate, Alexis Tsipras, had been shelling out to them throughout the election campaign. The electorate has not yet forgotten where the left-wing populism of a party related, among others, to Pablo Iglesias's original Podemos led them. Tsipras has plummeted 11 points from the support that Greeks still gave him in 2019, and is down to 20% of the electorate, half that of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's New Democracy.
However, neither of the two parties obtained the absolute majority, set at 45% +1 vote, required to form a government, once the 50-seat bonus for the party with the most votes was abolished in this first round. This emergency measure, put in place to promote a solid and stable government that would lead the country out of the crisis in which it was plunged between 2012 and 2019, would be activated again in the more than likely event of a second round at the end of July or the beginning of July.
Tsipras was counting this time on the Greeks having forgotten the promises he made to them after becoming the third force in parliament in 2012 and becoming head of government in 2015 when the EU demanded tough austerity plans to give Athens the financial aid to rescue it from bankruptcy and not kick it out of the euro. With great panache, Tsipras called a referendum against austerity, velvet language of many rights and promises without quid pro quo, which voters rewarded with their backing. It did not take Tsipras himself a day to betray those promises when he came face to face with reality, so that he accepted each and every one of the heavy cuts imposed by Brussels, which among other things reduced the amount of pensions by 50%. Riots multiplied, citizens' savings vanished and the country became the pariah of Europe, saved in extremis by Angela Merkel's German leadership to prevent Greece's expulsion from the eurozone.
As was to be expected, the shock of the crisis gave a majority in 2019 to Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party, which has managed in its first term to restore confidence in the country, make it grow by 8.4% in 2021 and 5.9% in 2022, well above the rest of the EU countries, as well as establishing a favourable scenario for foreign investment, which had fled in terror when Tsipras established the inevitable "corralito".
New Democracy's landslide but insufficient victory in these elections will surely lead Mitsotakis to renounce a coalition that would allow him to govern and then provoke the second round, in which the 50-seat bonus for the winning party would be reinstated. In other words, he is counting on obtaining an absolute majority and then governing without the possible brakes of a more or less uncomfortable partner, which would be none other than Solución Griega, a party with nationalist postulates similar to those of Spain's Vox.
The sum of the left-wing parties also falls far short of this absolute majority, as Syriza itself, the Communist Party and the Pasok-Kinal socialists barely reach 35%.
The solution, then, seems to be a foregone conclusion: that second round, in which, barring a telluric cataclysm, Mitsotakis will win an absolute majority to govern for another four years. He would then have the opportunity to bring about, as he himself predicted, "the most radical changes that will make it possible to close the gap that still separates us from Europe", thus admitting that such was the degree of prostration in which the country and Greek society had been left that several years of growth well above that of other EU partners would be needed to close the gap.
It should also be noted that the great tragedy of the Tempe train crash, in which 57 people lost their lives, did not penalise Mitsotakis. Much of the campaigning from across the left had placed the blame for the accident on the government's alleged neglect. It seems that, despite the fact that most of the victims were young university students, and in view of the results, the Greek youth have not swallowed the bait either.
And, finally, it is also worth noting the new setback for the former darling of the far left, the arrogant former Finance Minister Yanis Varufakis, whose MeRA25 party, once a breakaway from Syriza, is out of parliament after failing to get even half of the 5% of the votes needed.
However, neither of the two parties obtained the absolute majority, set at 45% +1 vote, required to form a government, once the 50-seat bonus for the party with the most votes was abolished in this first round. This emergency measure, put in place to promote a solid and stable government that would lead the country out of the crisis in which it was plunged between 2012 and 2019, would be activated again in the more than likely event of a second round at the end of July or the beginning of July.
Tsipras was counting this time on the Greeks having forgotten the promises he made to them after becoming the third force in parliament in 2012 and becoming head of government in 2015 when the EU demanded tough austerity plans to give Athens the financial aid to rescue it from bankruptcy and not kick it out of the euro. With great panache, Tsipras called a referendum against austerity, velvet language of many rights and promises without quid pro quo, which voters rewarded with their backing. It did not take Tsipras himself a day to betray those promises when he came face to face with reality, so that he accepted each and every one of the heavy cuts imposed by Brussels, which among other things reduced the amount of pensions by 50%. Riots multiplied, citizens' savings vanished and the country became the pariah of Europe, saved in extremis by Angela Merkel's German leadership to prevent Greece's expulsion from the eurozone.
As was to be expected, the shock of the crisis gave a majority in 2019 to Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party, which has managed in its first term to restore confidence in the country, make it grow by 8.4% in 2021 and 5.9% in 2022, well above the rest of the EU countries, as well as establishing a favourable scenario for foreign investment, which had fled in terror when Tsipras established the inevitable "corralito".
New Democracy's landslide but insufficient victory in these elections will surely lead Mitsotakis to renounce a coalition that would allow him to govern and then provoke the second round, in which the 50-seat bonus for the winning party would be reinstated. In other words, he is counting on obtaining an absolute majority and then governing without the possible brakes of a more or less uncomfortable partner, which would be none other than Solución Griega, a party with nationalist postulates similar to those of Spain's Vox.
The sum of the left-wing parties also falls far short of this absolute majority, as Syriza itself, the Communist Party and the Pasok-Kinal socialists barely reach 35%.
The solution, then, seems to be a foregone conclusion: that second round, in which, barring a telluric cataclysm, Mitsotakis will win an absolute majority to govern for another four years. He would then have the opportunity to bring about, as he himself predicted, "the most radical changes that will make it possible to close the gap that still separates us from Europe", thus admitting that such was the degree of prostration in which the country and Greek society had been left that several years of growth well above that of other EU partners would be needed to close the gap.
It should also be noted that the great tragedy of the Tempe train crash, in which 57 people lost their lives, did not penalise Mitsotakis. Much of the campaigning from across the left had placed the blame for the accident on the government's alleged neglect. It seems that, despite the fact that most of the victims were young university students, and in view of the results, the Greek youth have not swallowed the bait either.
And, finally, it is also worth noting the new setback for the former darling of the far left, the arrogant former Finance Minister Yanis Varufakis, whose MeRA25 party, once a breakaway from Syriza, is out of parliament after failing to get even half of the 5% of the votes needed.