ND senses election victory
Both main parties insisted yesterday that they can win Sunday’s general elections and form a government despite New Democracy claiming the unpublished opinion polls show that it has a decisive lead. ND sources said yesterday that polls they have been conducting show the ruling conservatives getting at least 42 percent of the vote – a percentage that would guarantee them a clear, but narrow, majority in the 300-seat Parliament, even if five rather than four parties are voted into power. This would also prevent ND from having to form a coalition with another party, such as the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS). Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, who was speaking at a rally in Agrinion last night, has already discounted the possibility of such a coalition and said he would call new elections if he did not have a clear majority. The conservatives want to convince more voters on the right of the political spectrum to cast their ballots in favor of the ruling party rather than LAOS. Echoing his address in Iraklion, Crete, on Monday, the prime minister encouraged his supporters to put down the party’s flags and wave the Greek flag instead to remind people that «there are goals that exceed the party political dividing lines.» Opinion polls cannot be published during the two weeks before a general election and PASOK rejected yesterday suggestions that secret surveys are displaying a steady lead for the ruling conservatives. «If there are polls that give them a comfortable, as they call it, lead or majority, then they would not have issued the desperate and extortionate dilemma last Thursday: ‘Either a clear majority or new elections,’» said PASOK spokesman Yiannis Ragoussis. Sources from within the Socialist camp indicated there are concerns about the rise in popularity of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) following the impressive performance of its leader, Alekos Alavanos, in last week’s televised debate. «We have had enough of the misery that accompanies the change of power between the two main parties,» Alavanos told supporters yesterday. «The political map has to change in these elections; the two-party system has to be defeated.» Alavanos, however, ruled out the possibility of working with PASOK’s leadership to form a coalition should there be no clear winner in Sunday’s election.
