Greek election calms euro jitters — for now, writes Matthew Fisher
Greece will remain in the eurozone after Sunday’s parliamentary elections appeared to give a pro euro, pro-bailout party enough seats in parliament to create a coalition to deal with the southern European nation’s crippling debts.
The result should provide a measure of relief to the European Union and help calm turbulent international markets, although the continent’s debt crisis is likely to continue and possibly worsen in the coming months — not only here but in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
“Greeks have voted to remain in the eurozone,” New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said late Sunday in a televised address. “There will be no doubt about the position of Greece in Europe. There will be no further adventures. This is an important moment for Greece and the rest of Europe . . . Greece will honour its obligations.”
With more than half of Sunday’s votes counted, the centre-right New Democracy Party had 30.1 per cent of the vote in Greece’s second general election in six weeks. That put it about 3.5 per cent ahead of Syriza, a left-wing party that intended to repudiate Greece’s agreements with the EU regarding the country’s debts and drastic spending cuts.
Placing first is hugely important in Greek elections because the top finisher gets a bonus of 50 additional seats in the 300-seat Parliament. If current trends hold, New Democracy will have 131 seats compared to 70 for Syriza — although the difference between them was only a few hundred thousand votes. Without explaining what he meant, Samaras proposed what he called a national salvation government. This was immediately rejected by Syriza.
New Democracy is likely to establish a working coalition with Pasok, a pro-bailout socialist party, that ran third Sunday with about 11 per cent of the vote and which called late Sunday for Syriza to join a national unity government.
To ensure that it has a reasonable parliamentary majority, New Democracy probably will try also to make a deal with the Democratic Left, which received about five per cent of the vote.
“We will be in a position to discuss any interventions as an opposition party,” Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, told a subdued gathering of his followers. “They cannot proceed without taking into account our position.”
Syriza, which only had the backing of about five per cent of the electorate six weeks ago, has now won about one-quarter of the vote. It also received by far the most votes from young Greeks, who are reeling from a 50 per cent unemployment rate. It indicated late Sunday that it would call its supporters into the streets to protest if the new government did not do anything to lessen the impact of the austerity program that as said Sunday that he would continue to pursue.
In a further sign of Greece’s political volatility, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party saw its support increase slightly to about seven per cent.
Tsipras had declared that his party, which admires Che Guevera and Fidel Castro, would tear up existing agreements with the EU and walk away from or declare a moratorium on the payment of hundreds of billions of euros in debt — while somehow allowing Greece to go on using the euro. Critics had speculated that Greece’s creditors would reject Syriza’s demands.
Syzira not only wanted to renege on the existing debt agreements, it also intended to dump provisions lowering the minimum wage and other measures that would great reduce government spending and public sector employment. The EU, its wealthier member states and the International Monetary Fund want Greece to carry out the terms of a stiff austerity program that it agreed to in return for hundreds of billions of euros in emergency financial assistance. While stating that it would honour this commitment, New Democracy also has indicated its wants the process slowed down. German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated Sunday she was prepared to consider giving Greece more time to gets its house in order, although she has refused to discuss watering down the agreement.
“Before they took good teeth out of dead people. Now they take it out of the living,” was how Kostas Marthas described the tough conditions that had been set by the EU, the IMF and Germany, which is by far Europe’s most successful and influential economy.
Marthas, a longtime supporter of the centre-left Pasok party, which usually has dominated Greek politics, said he came to Polling Station 852 at Agioi Anagiroi Gymnasium No. 1 to cast his ballot for Syriza because “it had made a promise to restore our salaries to their previous levels. Who can live on what we are paid today?”
Like many Greeks, Marthas blamed foreign bankers and especially Germany for Greece’s current woes. With the 58-year-old taxi driver outside the polling station was his 25 year old daughter, Katerina, a statistician working for an insurance company, who also voted for Syriza. “I voted for Syriza six weeks ago, but I wasn’t certain about my choice then. Now I am,” she said. “We are not happy so we voted for a change.”
Because her mother had lost her job with a publisher 18 months ago and with so many of her friends jobless, the younger Marthas said she knew she was lucky to have a job. But the salary for a job she had spent more than a year finding recently had been cut by 150 euros to 900 euros (about $1,200) a month.
“I am rich compared to my peers, but I still live at home because I have no choice,” she said, adding that like most of her friends she would soon start looking for work abroad.