GREECE: Disputes Return After the Election Intermission

By Apostolis Fotiadis Reprint | | Print |

Apostolis Fotiadis

ATHENS, Sep 27 2007 (IPS) - As he headed for re-election Sep. 16, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis addressed the nation saying that “the centre right New Democracy’s (ND) victory is a clear message to move on with urgent reforms.”

Examining his statement more carefully, someone might notice that his agenda of urgent reforms is pending since ND’s previous electoral victory in 2004. And that the so-called priorities are in fact controversial social issues stagnating for years, on which the public is not necessarily positioned according to party loyalty or its electoral choice.

The general disappointment with the poverty in political life, and the government’s failure to handle the fires crisis that shook the country two weeks before the election, gave the ND 41.83 percent of the vote – 375,000 less than in 2004. Under a new proportional system, that gave the ND a two-seat parliamentary majority. The loss translates to 30 seats in parliament.

But the ND’s electoral dive didn’t benefit the main opposition party, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), which faced its worst election in 30 years, losing around 300,000 voters. Hours after the exit polls, Pasok sank into its worst leadership crisis for years. George Papandreou, son of party founder Andreas Papandreou, will have until mid-November to defend his leadership against constitutional expert and former culture minister Evengelos Venizelos.

This enormous deviation of ‘protest vote’ from the two big parliamentary parties went to their smaller rivals. The Communist Party of Greece, the only in Europe that never broke from a Marxist-Leninist Soviet era tradition, and the Radical Leftist Alliance, expressing a modern interpretation of social democracy, doubled their seats in the 300-seat parliament to 36. Together they got more than a million votes, in a nation of 10 million.

“The election has updated the political scenery, mainly with the creation of a rift from the left,” said political analyst Petros Papakostadinou. “This might not be an earthquake but it has more potential than in 1996, when a similar reduction in the percentages of the two big parties had taken place.”

The election also brought the extreme right wing Popular Orthodox Alarm party into parliament. Among its ten representatives are declared homophobes, racists, and anti-Semites. In his first message party president George Karatzaferis summarised LAOS policy as “Greece for the Greeks”.

Ambitious and confident, the small parties will maintain harsh opposition tones, while ND will attempt to exploit Pasok’s crisis. Predictably the confrontation will begin from the point where it stood before the elections.

The PM decided at the beginning of August to go for election under fear of an anticipated report by former prosecutor George Zorbas. After scrutinising a scandal over sale of complex structured bonds at inflated prices, he was expected to blame high-ranking members of the administration.

Five days after the election, on Sep. 21, all party officials and government managers involved in the sale either changed posts or resigned from frontline positions.

At the same time the cabinet is preparing controversial reforms, principally to the pay-as-you-go pension system, and for abolition of the state’s constitutional monopoly on higher education.

Finance minister George Alogoskoufis will discuss raising retirement age with the trade unions. Union leaders also want a 20 percent increase in minimum wage.

For new education minister Euripides Stylianides, opening the path for private business into higher education will be equally challenging. Last winter, increasingly violent street protests forced withdrawal of a constitutional amendment. New initiatives are likely to create similar scenes.

On the agenda is also privatisation of infrastructure in telecommunications, aviation, transportation, energy and maritime sectors. The first to be considered will be Olympic Airlines. The government appears determined to sell or liquidate it. Private investors hesitate to take on its 1.58 billion euros debt, but shutting it down may not be an option; the airline employs 9,000.

Despite the confident rhetoric of Costas Caramanlis, his agenda is not likely to go through smoothly. The new environment of polarity is unlikely to allow mature dialogue.

“Greece is a characteristic case where absence of a dialogue culture dominates politics,” Nikos Kosmatopoulos, social scientist from the University of Zurich told IPS. “The fact that governments run to early elections every time the polls show they are winning, or in order to avoid political costs, as in Zorba’s case, is another proof of this immaturity.”

Meanwhile, public dept is over 80 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). In spite of the economy growing 4 percent a year for a decade, one in five Greeks lives in poverty by European Union standards. Youth unemployment is 25 percent. No salary increases are expected, keeping starting wages to an average of 650 euros a month. Retail prices are climbing 5 percent a year.