WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY GREECE News Journal Update - (en) Italy,Greece, UCADI #171: Left divided: Greece goes to the right (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On 21 May 2023, early parliamentary elections were held in Greece before the

natural end of the legislature, initiated in 2019 by New Democracy: votes were
cast in 21,262 primary and 188 rural polling stations, with a proportional law,
without a majority premium. New Democracy won 40.79% of the vote and 146 seats;
in second place the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) of Alexis Tsipras with
20.07% and 71 seats; in third place the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PaSoK) -
Movement for Change by Nikos Androualakis with 11.46% and 41 seats; the fourth
party was the Communist Party of Greece Dimitris Koutsoubas with 7.23% and 26
seats and the fifth was the Hellenic Solution, a right-wing party, with 4.45% and
16 seats. The other parties did not enter Parliament, having collected less than
3%. Golden Dawn, an extreme right-wing party, dissolved by the judiciary and
declared illegitimate by a special law, did not participate in the vote: its
votes seem to have been divided between the last party mentioned and small
formations that did not pass the threshold .
request the dissolution of Parliament, pursuant to art. 41 of the Greek
Constitution, to guarantee political stability through new elections which will
take place by adopting an electoral law which assigns 50 seats as a majority
bonus to the party which obtains 37% of the votes, and this in order to avoid the
formation of a government of coalition.
It should be noted that in Greece voting is compulsory; it was voted by secret
ballot in 59 constituencies. All citizens who had not been deprived of the right
to vote by a definitive sentence over the age of 17 on December 31 of the
election year participated in the electoral competition. Since 2019, Greeks have
also the right to vote resident abroad who have lived in Greece for two years in
the past 35 years and have filed a tax return in the current or previous tax
year. Foreign voters choose the party they want within a national constituency,
without expressing preferences and their vote equally affects the overall
electoral result.
300 deputies are elected: of these, 285 in the constituencies, while the
remaining fifteen are elected uniformly throughout the territory (state deputies).

Voting analysis

First of all, it must be said that 9,810,040 Greek citizens took part in the
vote, of whom 5,049,998 were women and 4,760,042 were men; 27 parties and 8
coalitions of parties. 438,595 young people between the ages of 17 and 21 voted
for the first time. In particular, there were 112,097 seventeen-year-olds voting
for the first time: 57,357 boys and 54,740 girls.
In the last decade, young people have not been the source of renewal of the
electoral base of the parties, but also the determining factor for the outcome of
the electoral competitions, due to their completely different electoral behavior
compared to that of the older ones, which has placed an end to the traditional
bipartisanship and saw the emergence of SYRIZA.
To be understandable, the analysis of the vote must start from the autumn of
2009, when the new Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou (PaSoK), publicly revealed
that the economic balance sheets transmitted by the previous Greek governments to
the European Union had been falsified, with the goal of securing Greece's entry
into the Eurozone. Following the electoral earthquake of May 2012, the strength
of the two historical parties (PaSoK and New Democracy) collapsed to 23% in the
18-34 age group of voters, against 49% of the over 55s (and 58% of the over - 65s
), thus recording the personal differentiation of the vote (together with the
geographical and social criterion) which substantially divided the electorate
into two distinct areas, almost unrelated to each other.
What happened meant that this trend was confirmed in the 2015 elections, with the
most significant increase in the percentages of SYRIZA, observed among voters
over 55 (+15%), causing an at least partial tendency to homogenize the age gap
between voters. This ensured SYRIZA's rise to power in September of that year.
Aiming to maintain hegemony over the young electorate, it is easy to understand
why the Tsipras government introduced the vote for 17-year-olds, gaining a
consensus that has gradually eroded due to the policy of sacrifices deriving from
the acceptance of the Memorandum and the outcome of the referendum . Indeed, the
greatest consensus achieved by SYRIZA as a "youth" party can be found in the
dynamic age range of 35-54 of the voters when most of them focused on the social
(and secondarily cultural) content of the opposition to the Memorandum.
The hard sacrifices imposed on the country, the cession of the main economic
assets imposed on the Government by the Troika (cession of the port of Piraeus to
the Chinese, of Athens Airport to the Germans, etc.), the shortage of foodstuffs,
medicines and the of public medical care, displaced many young people to the
positions of Golden Dawn and other right-wing groups and ensured that the
radicalization of young people was not expressed exclusively on the left.
This emphasis on the youth vote by SYRIZA was repeated, with even greater
intensity, in the 2019 (parliamentary) elections, with the percentages in the
17-34 age group remaining almost at the same levels as in 2015 (37%) - although
at the European elections it was precisely these age groups that had
predominantly expressed the vote of anti-government dissatisfaction (only 22%) -,
while on the other hand the percentages of NDs rose, regaining positions up to
almost 50% among the voters over 65 years old and with a significant
strengthening of ND (+14%) in the electorate between 35-55 years old, which has
lowered the demarcation line between the two parties.This constituted a complete
reversal of electoral correlations with the core of Greek society and especially
with that electorate that had brought SYRIZA to power, creating the basis for the
victory of New Democracy.
The electoral result is therefore affected by the continuous decrease in the
numerical weight of younger voters: while the 18-35 age group represented 33% of
the country's adults in the 2001 census, the corresponding percentage dropped to
27% in 2011 and estimates it to be slightly above 20% in 2021, based on the
natural population movement (including deaths) of the last decade, making
SYRIZA's hypothetical advantage in the youth world now minimal. After the Tempe
train disaster, SYRIZA hoped for a reawakening of attention from young people,
particularly affected by the disaster, since many of them were traveling on the
cursed train, but this reaction did not materialize and the scandal of the forced
refoulements of migrants, although hidden from the government-controlled media,
it was seen favorably by the middle class, scared of emigration and indeed
strengthened the government and its anti-emigration policy.

The divisions of the left and the economic policy of the Mitsotaki government

As the electoral data show, the country is split in two between right and left,
similar to what happens in other European countries, such as Italy for example.
On closer inspection, the votes of New Democracy and those of the three left-wing
parties combined are equivalent and the number of seats is almost equal: but as
in Italy, also in Greece, the opposition to the right is rigorously divided and
loses. At the moment the creation of an aggregation, even simply electoral,
between the three parties of the left is unthinkable and it is therefore probable
that New Democracy will succeed in its intention of being awarded the majority prize.
Furthermore, it must be said that its premier Mitsotakis, a Harvard graduate and
former McKinsey consultant, arrived at the vote in the best possible conditions.
Economic circles believe that Greece enjoys good economic health: unemployment
has decreased, but precarious and long-term unemployment has increased, the
recovery of post-Covid tourism, which is growing strongly especially in the
islands, has led to a 5.9% increase in GDP % in 2022, even if inflation rises and
with it precarious work, inequality and overall poverty in the country. The
economic policy choices that characterize all conservative and reactionary
governments are appreciated by speculative finance, all the more so when the
countries that adopt them are fiercely Atlanticist, support NATO policy in Ukraine,
The result is a major blow for Tsipras, who lost his fourth consecutive electoral
battle after being prime minister from 2015 to 2019, during which he conducted
the very difficult negotiations with creditors that almost brought Greece out of
the euro. but he disappointed his supporters and lost a third of the votes
obtained in 2019, arriving in some constituencies after the socialist party
PaSok, proof of which is that he is the majority party only in the Rodopi
constituency, almost close to the border with Turkey. The choices of growing
compromise have greatly reduced Tsipras' grip on the electorate and the
separation from Varoufakis has certainly not helped the overall stability of the
party. Another victim of the vote is the former finance minister, Yanis
Varoufakis, whose left-wing anti-austerity party MeRA25 did not pass the 3%
threshold, despite its international relations and the many relations it
maintained with the left-wing forces of many countries, a clear sign that in this
phase of general crisis of the left it is difficult to find a viable alternative
to the growing power of the right. After all, the best ally of right-wing
governments have always been the divisions of the opposition, which went to the
vote fragmented and conflicted and unable to mend their divisions to form a
common front. clear sign that in this phase of general crisis of the left it is
difficult to find a valid alternative to the growing power of the right. After
all, the best ally of right-wing governments have always been the divisions of
the opposition, which went to the vote fragmented and conflicted and unable to
mend their divisions to form a common front. clear sign that in this phase of
general crisis of the left it is difficult to find a valid alternative to the
growing power of the right. After all, the best ally of right-wing governments
have always been the divisions of the opposition, which went to the vote
fragmented and conflicted and unable to mend their divisions to form a common front.
The May 21 vote is Greece's first since its economy ceased to be under close
scrutiny by international lenders that had provided bailout funds during the
country's nearly decade-long financial crisis and gutted the country: however,
definitely a rude awakening.

G. L.

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/05/29/sinistra-divisa-la-grecia-va-a-destra/
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