OPINION

Political expediency?

You don’t need to bug PASOK’s offices to prove that the party would be very happy with a drop in New Democracy’s popularity even if more votes were to go to the far-right superprefecture candidate Giorgos Karadzaferis. ND long avoided criticizing Karadzaferis’s LAOS party as if the development of this group to its right – and to its detriment – does not bother it. It is true that ND’s super-prefecture candidate Yiannis Tzannetakos has criticized Karadzaferis’s party, but there are still plenty of ND deputies who want their former colleague back in the fold. Political expediency may be a necessary evil, but it has its risks. Already Karadzaferis’s conversion into a regulating agent for tomorrow’s elections has bolstered his party with far more support than he can have hoped for; indeed he has succeeded in dragging LAOS out of relative obscurity and into the spotlight of central politics to ensure everyone hears of his «vision.» Reviling the undefended Martin Luther King, he explains: «I have a dream. To send Turkey back to Asia!… I will not solve the transport problem but I will open the road back to the East.» Exaggeration and peculiarity? No doubt. But it is precisely because we have begun to regard the rhetoric and actions of the far right as mere peculiarities that we see every brand of fascist on television debates. What we haven’t seen is a PASOK or ND deputy refuse to «exchange views» with staunch reactionaries and racists by leaving the discussion table. It is evidently a small price to pay for publicity…

Subscribe to our Newsletters

Enter your information below to receive our weekly newsletters with the latest insights, opinion pieces and current events straight to your inbox.

By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.