POLITICS-GREECE: Minorities May Hold Election Key

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Hilmi Toros

ISTANBUL, Mar 4 2004 (IPS) - Minority groups could hold the key to the outcome of elections in Greece this week.

The contest is considered such a close call that gypsies, immigrants from Russia and a Muslim minority of Turkish origin could decide who wins.

These minority groups add up to 600,000 in a population of 10.6 million. The ruling Pan Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) won the last election in 2000 by a margin of 70,000 votes.

In the final poll allowed two weeks before the polling date March 7, the conservative New Democracy (ND) party of Costas Karamanlis had a lead of three points over PASOK. The ruling party is now led by George Papandreou who took over from former prime minister Costas Simitis. ND polled about 40 percent to PASOK’s 37.

The margin had earlier been as wide as seven points, prompting Simitis to step down and turn the election into a battle between the Karamanlis and Papandreou political dynasties. Both are descendants of former prime ministers.

With Karamanlis’s lead down to what could be a margin of error, attention has focused on whatever groups of votes the parties can win. This includes the large electorate still undecided in the final poll (more than 10 percent) and groups on the fringes of mainstream politics.

Papandreou could gain a substantial part of the minority vote, says political analyst George Wilson.

"Greek Pontians from Russia who gained Greek citizenship on PASOK’s watch, the Greek Muslims of Thrace who see Papandreou as a supporter of minority rights and embrace his efforts at Greek-Turkish rapprochement, gypsies and diaspora Greeks are all voting groups that do not figure prominently in regular polling but are considered likely to vote heavily for the ruling socialists," Wilson wrote in the Athens News.

There are an estimated 300,000 gypsies, 150,000 Greek citizens of Russian origin, and an equal number of Muslims.

Papandreou is also courting the women’s vote, claiming that PASOK passed legislation for equality in education, for women’s access to the labour market, and for the protection of mothers. He announced a "national action programme" that will establish a gender equality council, and set up a national women’s network to help find jobs for women and to create childcare centres.

Fifty-two percent of the electorate is female. But in the land where democracy was born, women were given the vote only in 1952. And only 8.7 percent of the present MPs are women, less than a third of the EU average.

"Vote-for-Women" brochures have been handed out in an EU-funded project. Papandreou could gain if women vote along gender lines because of his strong women’s platform, and because he is the son of a U.S. feminist.

But much of the campaigning has been over bread-and-butter issues, and marked by what business commentator Dimitris Kontogiannis sees as "more similarities than differences." These issues include unemployment officially running at 9 percent, ways of making Greece more competitive, sustaining current growth, and overhauling the welfare system.

Over foreign policy too, the differences appear to be minor, although Papandreou as former foreign minister was the architect of rapprochement with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally and traditional adversary Turkey, and is seen by many as the more likely to settle territorial disputes between the two countries.

The winner will also have to plunge into the delicate task of another attempt at re-unifying Cyprus before its entry into the EU May 1. The island was divided into a Turkish north and Greek south after Turkish military intervention over a failed coup in 1974 to unite the island with Greece. Karamanlis is seen as less accommodating than Papandreou over Cyprus.

So is it Karamanlis, 47, campaigning to end 12 years of Socialist rule that he claims is tainted by cronyism and corruption? Or Papandreou, 51, trying to portray himself not as a continuation of PASOK rule, but as an innovator who had his nomination endorsed by a popular vote open to all voters – and won 1.5 million votes, three times the number of registered PASOK voters?

In his last campaign plea, Karamanlis said only his party can bring change. "PASOK has had a change of leadership, but has not managed to change the political landscape," he said. "That is because it is clear to everyone that PASOK has exhausted its possibilities. It will need some time in opposition before it can look critically at the mistakes and omissions of its term in office, to review policies, to formulate proposals and come before the Greek people with a truly new face."

The ND is "stuck in the past," Papandreou replied. "In opposition, its policy was phobic, introverted, defensive and absolute," he said, and promised a government "based on open dialogue and participation."