Stability and Greek political parties
Is it possible that by observing Greek politics from far away I can form a better point of view or is it the case that because of the distance I don’t have a good picture? In any case, here is how I see Greek politics now.
The Greek people will go to the polls once again on June 25; the election will, like the last one, be fair and democratic. But I believe that unlike the last elections, the people of Greece who are not already committed to vote for a particular party have no choice but to vote for the New Democracy party. My opinion is not based on ideological criteria but rather on realism.
As things stand today ND is projected to win the elections, the question is whether or not it will have enough votes to form a government. My assumption is that most non-committed Greek voters want, above all, political stability and at present only ND can offer that. There are three political parties (MeRA25, Freedom Sailing, and Niki) which did not get enough votes to get them into the Greek Parliament last time, but they have a chance to do so next time. All of them, regardless of political orientation, have pledged that they will not cooperate with ND in forming a government. The same holds true for the parties which are represented in Parliament now. Greek Solution, KKE and PASOK have made it clear that they will not cooperate with ND; and SYRIZA, the party that most likely will finish second, is also highly unlikely to become a governing partner.
We then have seven political parties of which only one might receive 20% of the votes with the rest securing lower, and even much lower numbers. And yet, all of those parties are unwilling to cooperate with others and form a government. It is unclear then what they want from the voters; do they believe that magically their vote total will rise from low double digits, and often much lower, to capture the majority? Highly unlikely. Are they indifferent to the implications of a third or even fourth election without a clear winner? Are they disinterested in the prospect of instability for months to come without an elected government? Is their dislike for ND, however justified it might be, so strong that everything else is irrelevant?
What are those seven parties asking the independent voters to do? Vote for them and achieve what? Realistically, the independent vote for any of the seven will not be enough to transform them into a governing party. In essence the seven ask the independent voter to vote for them only in order to deny ND the numbers to form a government. This is not a recipe for success either for the parties in question, but more important to all of us, this is not to the benefit of the Greek people as a whole. Thus, in the next Greek fair and democratic elections the non-committed voters, and maybe even some who are not thrilled with the last four years, have no choice; it is ND and Kyriakos Mitsotakis or instability which will hurt the country’s economy and might tempt Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to embark on foreign adventures to divert attention from his own abysmal economic record.
John Mazis is Professor of History at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
