Athens, 25/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - “The Greek people have turned a new page in history, hope has turned a new page in history”, announced Alexis Tsipras, leader of the anti-austerity far-left Syriza party, on Sunday 25 January when it became clear that his party had won the Greek general elections.
According to partial results (68% of the votes counted) announced at midnight local time by the Greek interior ministry, Syriza had 35-36% of the vote and was close to an absolute majority of 151 seats in the national parliament. Tsipras thanked his voters for this “clear, strong and undeniable mandate”. He said the Greek elections had “closed the vicious circle of austerity (…), had made the troika a matter of the past”. He told supporters and reporters from around the world: “It's a victory of all the nations of Europe that are struggling against austerity”.
The young Greek leader promised to negotiate and work with Greece's international partners to reach a “mutually profitable” solution via a recovery plan without a new deficit and without new punishment for the people. He said his first priority was to give Greece back its dignity.
The outgoing prime minister, Antonis Samaras, admitted defeat. His Christian-Democrat party, New Democracy, obtained 28% of the vote. Talking to the press at Zappeion Palace, he said: “I have a clear conscience”. He pointed out that he had come to power in 2012 when the country was on the brink of collapse and despite mistakes and injustices, “we averted the worst”. Samaras hoped the next government would make good use of what had been gained during his term of office, particularly getting rid of the primary budget deficit (not including debt-servicing). He added that his party had only lost two percentage points on the 2012 elections and promised to play “a decisive role in new developments”. It was not clear on Sunday evening whether Samaras was going to remain the head of his party.
The head of the Independent Greeks party, Panos Kammenos, said: “Independent Greeks will help to make sure a new social and political reality can be stabilised. Independent Greeks will certainly support all the efforts for change”. According to the Greek Skai television channel, Kammenos is against the formation of a coalition government with the centrist To Potami party. The head of To Potami, Stavros Theodorakis, was open to a coalition, but not an anti-EU government.
Seven parties will have seats at the Greek parliament: - Syriza (36.06%) with at least 149 seats; - New Democracy (28.12%) with 76 seats; - the far-right Golden Dawn (6.34%) with 17 seats; - the liberal To Potami party (5.93%) with 17 seats; - the communist party KKE (5.45%) with 15 seats; - the socialist party Pasok (4.74%) with 13 seats; - and the Independent Greeks party (4.69%) with 13 seats. Georges Papandreou's Kinima did not achieve the 3% threshold required to have any seats in parliament.
As soon as the first results were announced, European political circles started to react. Germany's Manfred Weber, head of the EPP group at the European Parliament and a member of the same party as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, tweeted: “Reform path in Greece needs to be continued. Soon it will become clear that Mr Tsipras makes empty promises”. The ALDE and S&D groups at the EP urged the Syriza government to form a coalition with To Potami and Pasok. Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, head of the ALDE group at the EP, tweeted: “For a Greek future in Europe To Potami should play key role in any coalition government to tame Eurosceptic tendencies left&right”. Italy's Gianni Pitella, head of the S&D, encouraged “Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, which won most votes in the election, to start negotiations with all pro-European progressive forces to form a strong and workable government”. The GUE/NGL group, to which Syriza belongs at the EP, welcomed a far-left party coming to power in Europe again.
By midnight in Brussels, the presidents of the European Commission, European Council and EP had not officially reacted. The head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, will react when he arrives at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at midday on Monday 26 January (see EUROPE 11237).
Election day at the foot of the Acropolis
Primary school 70, on Kallisperi street at the foot of the Acropolis, is acting as a polling station for inhabitants of this district. At the school entrance, there are almost as many reporters as there are locals who have turned up to vote. The atmosphere is a world away from the tension felt during the early elections in June 2012 that swept Antonis Samaras' party to power. This area's voting won't determine the fate of the elections, unlike the more highly populated areas in District B in the Athens suburbs.
A Syriza poster and a KKE poster are posted on the entrance gate. Some voters are wearing the badge of the far right party, Golden Dawn. A young unemployed woman says she wants change, but does not think that Syriza will be able to achieve it, mentioning inconsistencies in the speeches of the party's leaders. A student in his twenties is blunt. Describing himself as a nationalist, he says he voted for Golden Dawn in the hope that it will put an end to immigration. Two women in their sixties come out of the polling station arm-in-arm. They refuse to say who they have voted for, but say they voted for caution rather than change.
Antonis Samaras has built his campaign around this dichotomy. Casting his vote in Pylos on Sunday morning, he said he was “optimistic that nobody will endanger Greece's European path.” “Today, we are deciding whether we are to move forward or to throw ourselves into the unknown”, he added. The campaign is based on warnings, but this has not always gone down well, as Tasos, a writer, explains: “Fear has gone, it is hope that reigns now”. Samaras' campaign did more to encourage, rather than discourage, him from voting for Syriza.
It is true that a number of successes have been made by the Samaras government in recent months, such as the return of economic growth, the return to the medium-term bond markets and a primary budget surplus (not including debt-servicing), which have enabled the outgoing prime minister to make reassuring speeches. But these successes are still not very visible in people's daily lives in a country where pay has been slashed and unemployment has risen so high that it now accounts for half of all young people.
Tasos says Samaras is a “slave of the European elite”. He says the EU should be a Europe of the people, not just of the elite. He is nevertheless aware that Alexis Tsipras will not have much room for manoeuvre, but hopes “he will at least be able to change a few things”.
This feeling that Greece is ruled from abroad is voiced by a number of people, but Alexis Tsipras seems to believe that he does have some room for manoeuvre. Emerging from the Kypseli polling station in Athens on Sunday morning, he said that Greeks would be deciding whether the troika will return to Greece tomorrow to implement the measures that Samaras decided upon or whether, tomorrow, Greece will enter tough negotiations for a return of its dignity.
While the To Potami party seems to be a 'safe vote' for people who want change but do not go as far as supporting Syriza's ideas, Samaras is placing his hopes in the undecided, whom he sees as accounting for 14% of voters. “They will vote for us”, he said on Saturday at a rally of his supporters in Syntagma Square, opposite the national parliament. Most of the undecided voters seem to be women who tend to vote conservatively.
Earlier in the day, I met 35-year old Effie, who did not go the polls because she was not able to make the journey to the polling station where she is registered, some 300 km from Athens. She had weighed things up carefully in her mind and would have voted for Syriza, for a number of reasons. Firstly, a desire for change, but also a protest vote against a government that simply alternates between Pasok and New Democracy. Power has shuffled between these two parties ever since 1945 and they are seen as having brought the country into crisis. Pasok was in power when Greece massaged its statistics for the first time so that it could join the eurozone. And it was after two New Democracy governments that Pasok adjusted the public deficit figure for 2009, doubling the previously admitted figure.
What is striking when talking to Effie is her resignation, which seems to affect the entire country. Greeks are more stoical than ever these days. “It isn't a crisis any more, it's a reality”, she says, adding that she has got used to the situation. She hopes that a Greek spring is on the cards, but does not really believe it. (EL)
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