Greece - Elections 21 May 2023
Perhaps Greece is moving toward a new kind of system where the right wing will be in power for a long time, leading the country toward a quasi-illiberal system with authoritarian traits. This would mean that scrutiny of the government by parliament, independent institutions and the media would be extremely weak. In this way, Greece would end up following in the footsteps of Central European countries and Italy.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said 21 March 2023 that the country would hold a general election in May, as his government faces widespread anger over a train disaster that killed 57 people in February. "I can tell you with certainty that the elections will take place in May," he said in an interview with TV channel Alpha.
Greece is gearing up for a vote on May 21 and there may be opportunities for opposing political parties to gain ground from the governing New Democracy party. Major scandals, from a tragic train collision to government wiretapping, may make this the most unpredictable election in more than a decade. Adding to the uncertainty, an estimated 440,000 young people are set to vote for the first time.
The conservative government's mandate expires in early July. The elections had initially been planned for April, but the collision between two trains, the worst rail accident in Greek history, stunned the nation and led to a change in plans. The train disaster sparked weeks of angry and occasionally violent protests, and struck a massive blow to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his government ahead of the elections.
Greece is a constitutional republic and multiparty parliamentary democracy. Legislative authority is vested in a unicameral parliament, which approves a government headed by a prime minister. In 2019 the country held parliamentary elections that observers considered free and fair. A government formed by the New Democracy Party headed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis leads the country.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of prison detainees and of migrants and asylum seekers by law enforcement authorities; restrictions on free expression and media including enforcement or threat to enforce criminal libel and slander laws; forced returns and alleged violence by government authorities towards migrants and asylum seekers; inadequate investigation and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence; crimes involving violence targeting members of national/racial/ethnic minority groups; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons.
Media and NGO reports raised concerns about instances in which police or border guards were alleged to have used violent and dangerous tactics to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from entering the country. According to these reports, some migrants and asylum seekers alleged authorities beat them and took their clothes, money, and cell phones, and left them stranded in the Aegean or on islets in the Evros border region for days without access to food, water, or medical intervention.
The constitution and law protect freedom of expression but specifically allow restrictions on speech inciting discrimination, hatred, or violence against persons or groups based on their race, skin color, religion, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, or who express ideas insulting to persons or groups on those grounds. On 17 July 2022, the deputy minister for contemporary culture and a top economic advisor to the prime minister filed complaints against ultrasensationalist news site Makeleio for hateful, homophobic, and slanderous speech against them equating homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality.
Journalists were subjected to physical attack, harassment, or intimidation due to their reporting in at least four instances, with anarchist groups claiming responsibility in three of the four cases. An anarchist group named “Thousands of Suns of the Night” claimed responsibility on an anarchist blog for the July 13 bombing of Real Media Group. The authors said they conducted the bombing because the media group was aligned with the government and its policies on the environment, energy, the pandemic, and Ukraine.
In 2019 the country held parliamentary elections that observers considered free and fair. As a result of the elections, the New Democracy Party gained a majority of the parliamentary seats and party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis became the country’s prime minister, succeeding a coalition of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and ANEL (independent Greeks) parties, headed by then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
New Democracy promised to build on tax cuts it delivered in its first term and to achieve 3 percent annual growth, more foreign direct investment and less than 8 percent unemployment – down from 11.4 percent today. The government budget returned to primary surplus last year after a debt crisis, three bailouts and years of oversight by lenders. It expects to achieve AAA investment grade status with ratings agencies this year, which would lower its borrowing costs. It also promises to produce almost all of Greece’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027 to make the country more autonomous.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is banking on his high personal approval ratings. He was praised for his management of the COVID-19 pandemic, a row over refugees with Turkey in 2020 and the energy crisis that broke out with the Ukraine war. Greece paid the highest per capita energy subsidies in Europe after Germany, spending 4.8 billion euros ($5.27bn) last year.
Syriza, or the Radical Coalition of the Left, which lost power to New Democracy in 2019, criticised Mitsotakis unrelentingly. It believes he has sided with the likes of Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban and Italy’s far-right premier Giorgia Meloni on refugee policy, accusing him of turning a blind eye to illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers at the borders with Turkey.
Syriza also decried as inadequate Mitsotakis’s response to a phone-tapping scandal. Last year, Mitsotakis fired his nephew from a top government post for signing permits to tap the phones of Pasok leader Nikos Androulakis, two opposition members of the European Parliament and at least two journalists. He also passed a new law to promote transparency on clandestine operations.
Pasok-KINAL, the Movement for Change-Panhellenic Socialist Movement, used to be New Democracy’s main rival and commanded 44 percent of the popular vote in 2009. It fell to single-digit electoral performances after supporting government spending cuts to balance the budget in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Its new leader, Nikos Androulakis, is bidding for a high share of the vote, promising a green transition away from coal and natural gas, a strong national healthcare system, transparency and meritocracy. He decries Mitsotakis and Tsipras as unfit to lead because both supported austerity policies during the post-2008 global financial crisis, which impoverished many Greeks. He referred to the two politicians as “populism with a tie and populism without a tie”.
The great left-wing alliance of which Tsipras spoke in the run-up to the May election was simply implausible. Tsipras and Syriza, who once carried the hopes of the country's left, lost credibility during the 2015 crisis. He promised voters that he would abandon austerity. Then, after 61% of voters in the 2015 referendum backed an end to austerity, Syriza did a U-turn. Tsipras' decision to move ahead with austerity proposals eight years ago robbed the country of the chance of a new left-wing start. Tsipras' U-turn after the July 5 referendum in 2015 was a shock from which many left-wing voters in Greece have never recovered. It led to a split within Syriza during which several high-profile figures — including Varoufakis, the former finance minister — left the party.
None of the leaders of the other left-wing parties showed any interest in it. For Nikos Androulakis of the social-democratic PASOK, an alliance with Tsipras would be a tough sell. PASOK — once a major party in Greece — doesn't enjoy a good reputation. Many associate it with the corruption and nepotism of the 1980s, which is why many PASOK supporters and members switched to Syriza before 2015. Varoufakis, who has lauded MeRA25 as a real left-wing alternative to Tsipras, also rejected talk of an alliance with Syriza. "We will not work with Syriza. Where's the difference between them and New Democracy?" he said. The only remaining party is the Communist Party of Greece, which refuses to join any government coalitions until Greece officially becomes a socialist country.
Greece’s Hellenic Parliament (sometimes called the Voulí) has 300 members who are elected using a wholly List PR system, similar to that of the List PR element of the previous Majority Bonus System. Elections will be held under a proportional system with a 3% entry barrier, which was introduced by the Syriza government when in office in 2016 (to replace the previous system which had a majority bonus) but was not used in 2019 due to a lack of the needed super-majority when approved by the parliament. The parties' votes that fail to reach the 3% barrier are divided on a proportional basis among those that manage to achieve it. The country's politicians have a long tradition of making big pledges during election campaigns. Georgios Papandreou, Greece's first postwar prime minister, once famously said that while making an election promise doesn't hurt, keeping it might. Papandreou, the head of one of the country's most influential political clans, knew that the only way to get anywhere in national politics in Greece was to promise the electorate the Earth. It's become a tradition kept alive by many of his successors.
George Papandreou — whose father and grandfather before him had also been prime minister — enjoyed a boost to his popularity in opinion polls in 2009. He, too, made big promises about social reform, pledging to distribute wealth in the country more evenly in his first 100 days in office. When asked by a journalist how he intended to pay for this pledge, Papandreou gave the now legendary reply: "The money is there" ("Lefta Yparchoun").
Papandreou went on to win an absolute majority in the election. But once again, the voters did not get what they were promised. Shortly after taking office, the socialist prime minister announced the start of a "titanic struggle" against his country's impending bankruptcy. The rest is history: Papandreou asked the International Monetary Fund and the European Union for financial assistance and in return, agreed to austerity measures that saw Greece's economic performance shrink by over 30%.
One recurring themes in Greek election campaigns are cheap loans and tax relief. One classic in this respect is the pledge made by the conservative opposition leader Constantine Mitsotakis in the run-up to the parliamentary election of 1985. Mitsotakis — father of the Greek prime minister elected in 2019 — promised to drastically cut taxes and customs duties on cars so that every family would be able to afford a new car. In the 1980s, Greece's socialist government levied massive taxes on imported industrial products in order to protect Greece's industry and fill the state's coffers. This was possible at the time because the European single market had not yet come into force. At the time, a German mid-range car was completely out of reach for many families in Greece.
Mitsotakis hoped this pledge would once more make his party appeal to hard-working middle-class voters. But the ruling socialists responded with a campaign slogan that mobilized young voters in particular: "Better ride a moped than vote Mitsotakis!" Socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou scored a clear victory in the poll and was reelected for a second term.
Another reason for this resounding victory was, however, "negative campaigning," which reached a historic peak during this particular campaign. Four weeks before the election, the pro-government newspaper Avriani printed a photo from World War II that showed a young Mitsotakis socializing with two German Nazi officers. The photo caused a scandal, especially as Mitsotakis had been a member of the resistance and had been imprisoned as a result. The conservatives cried foul and accused the socialists of forgery and fostering political conspiracy. But the damage was done.
It was only in 2016 that Athens-based investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis reported that the Nazi allegations against Mitsotakis had been fabricated and that the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, had been involved. All Greek media outlets considered this version of events to be plausible. But what did the Stasi have to do with the ruling socialists in Athens at the time? That question remains unanswered to this day.
Some 50 political groupings applied to field candidates in the upcoming election, 15 of which are further to the right than the ruling conservative New Democracy (ND) party. However, not all of them have been cleared to contest the election. One of the parties that's been banned from taking part is the country's highest-profile extreme-right party, the Greeks (Hellenes) Party. It was founded by the former lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris, who was an MP for the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party and was long seen as the party's leader-in-waiting. A self-confessed anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who has a swastika tattooed on one arm, Kasidiaris was sentenced in October 2020 to 13 years and 6 months in prison for running a criminal organization.
In early May, Greece's Supreme Court put a stop to Kasidiaris' political ambitions by banning his party from the upcoming election. In a 400-page explanation of the ruling, the judges outlined why Ilias Kasidiaris had been banned from standing in the election. To begin with, they argued, Kasidiaris had been found guilty of leading a criminal organization. Furthermore, he had incited people to violence, promoted a policy that is disrespectful of democracy and sought to weaken democratic state institutions and the of rule of law.
This was the first time since 1974 that the Supreme Court excluded a party from elections on policy grounds rather than just on formalities. The court's ruling means that no militant, extreme right-wing party will be in the next parliament. The Supreme Court excluded 13 other parties from the election as well, some of which also belong to the right wing of the political spectrum. "There will be no Golden Dawn successor in the next parliament," said Vassiliki Georgiadou, professor of political science at the Panteion University in Athens. "But that doesn't mean that there is no longer a demand for a radical right-wing party like this. The voters for such a party are there."
The only "Hellenic" party that is still in the race and could potentially pass the minimum three-percent threshold to enter parliament is Kyriakos Velopoulos' Greek Solution (Elliniki Lisi). Greek Solution has been in the Greek parliament since 2019 and has much in common with Germany's Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Velopoulos' party belongs to the family of populist, radical parties on the extreme right that are against immigration, multi-culturalism and globalization.
Financial worries are common to voters in all age groups, other issues such as financial and political corruption are top of the agenda for young people, said Nick Malkoutzis, co-founder of MacroPolis, an independent political analysis institute in Greece. According to Malkoutzis, today's young people are calling for greater accountability and transparency, and they're disappointed by the politicians at the helm. "Young people have very little faith in the major parties and mainstream politics," he said. "This pushes them toward the outer fringes of the political system." While the ruling conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the leftist Syriza alliance of former PM Alexis Tsipras battle it out for the young vote, many young people are turning to smaller parties in the race. One of these is MeRA25, founded by the left-wing former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. MeRA25 passed the 3% threshold in the 2019 parliamentary election and has had nine deputies in parliament ever since. Opinion polls currently put MeRA25 at about 4%, which is slightly higher than the 3.4% it got four years ago. In the 17–29 age group, it's even polling at 8.6%. There is, however, no evidence of a general shift to the right among young voters, said Loukia Kotronaki of the School of Political Science at Panteion University in Athens. During the protests that followed the train crash on February 28, she conducted a nationwide study of the political attitudes of young people between the ages of 17 and 34. The results painted a picture of a young generation with democratic impetus, but with no faith in the system and growing mistrust in the institutions of state. According to the study, 75.4% of those surveyed mistrust the current government and 88.5% the political parties. Generally speaking, those surveyed identified more with the left than with conservative or right-wing values, Kotronaki told DW. She also explained that the results showed that while people in this age group do indeed support democratic institutions, they don't agree with the way they are being run. It was highly likely that the result would be a hung parliament because no party appears to have the votes to claim 151 seats in the 300-seat chamber, and the three top parties have said they do not want to work with each other – although that is standard polarising behaviour before an election.
Under the new system, it is estimated that 45% of votes are needed for a party or a coalition of parties to have an outright majority. In the polls published over the last week, the incumbent centre-right New Democracy (ND) party is leading with some 36% of votes, followed by the left Syriza with 29% and, at a distance, the centrist PASOK with 10%. The communist party (KKE), the nationalist Greek Solution (EL) and the left-wing Mera25 are all expected to obtain parliamentary representation.
New Democracy led in opinion polls and was projected to win about 32 percent of the popular vote. Syriza, followed with an estimated 27 percent. Pasok-KINAL was in third at roughly 9 percent. The Communist Party of Greece, KKE, is polling an unusually high 6 percent. A slew of smaller parties may also clear the 3 percent threshold to enter parliament. Should they achieve that, they would take up seats that would otherwise be distributed to the larger parties in proportion to their share of the vote, reducing their chances of forming a single-party majority.
The smaller parties include the Diem25 with 4.5 percent support in opinion polls. The disruptive left party was founded by former Syriza Finance Minister Yianis Varoufakis, who believes Greece should give up the euro and reclaim its financial sovereignty with a return to the drachma.
If no party can form a government, a repeat election is to be held in early July.
A day after national elections failed to produce a single-party government, Greece on 22 May 2023 was bracing for a new ballot which vote-winner Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' party is poised to seek in order to govern alone. The conservative New Democracy party of Mitsotakis scored a thumping win in the 21May 2023 vote, with a clear 20-point lead over its nearest rival — Syriza led by leftist Alexis Tsipras. Voters handed the conservatives their best result since 2007, crediting the party with bringing economic stability back to a nation once known as an EU laggard.
But the win fell short of an outright majority, leaving Mitsotakis with the option of either seeking a coalition or calling a new vote. Left-wing daily Efsyn was headlined "Shock and awe", a feeling shared by both New Democracy and Syriza voters, while pro-government Proto Thema noted that the double-digit divide was the widest seen in the country since 1974. Mitsotakis himself said the "great victory surpassed our own expectations".
With the count almost complete, New Democracy won 146 seats in the 300-deputy parliament — five short of a majority. The 55-year-old Harvard graduate made clear his preferred option for a new ballot. "Together we will fight as of tomorrow, so that in the next elections, what citizens have already decided — a self-reliant New Democracy — will be mathematically confirmed at the ballot."
The results achieved by the country's leftist parties in the parliamentary election on May 21 were nowhere near as good as they had hoped after four years of Kyriakos Mitsotakis' conservative right wing rule. Despite a series of scandals, Prime Minister Mitsotakis and his New Democracy (ND) party were able to improve their result by a percentage point, taking them over the 40% mark. Opposition leader Alexis Tsipras and his leftist alliance Syriza dropped from 30% in 2019 to just 20% this year. His former party colleague and now opponent, Yanis Varoufakis, whose MeRA25 party held nine seats in the previous Greek parliament, fared no better, polling at under 3%, which would not be not enough to remain in parliament.
"We will move forward, boldly and steadily, to complete today's important first step, and be the final winners," he said, adding that Greeks "want a strong government". Tsipras also set the stage for a new vote, now expected as early as June 25, saying "the electoral cycle is not over yet". The next battle, he said, will be "critical and final".
Under a new electoral law that comes into play in the next election, the winner can obtain a bonus of up to 50 seats. Based on Sunday's showing and that calculation, New Democracy is virtually assured of a victory. But the left will likely seek to turn the tide by campaigning on cost-of-living problems which occupy many voters' minds. Both Tsipras and socialist party Pasok-Kinal, led by 44-year-old Nikos Androulakis, face an uphill task however. Pasok picked up just 11.46 percent of the vote. Another casualty was Tsipras' former maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose anti-austerity MeRA25 party failed to garner enough support to make it to parliament.
Greece's president appointed a caretaker prime minister to form a government that would lead the country to a repeat election on June 25, after the inconclusive vote. Under Greece's constitution, if coalition talks failed, the president appoints a caretak er prime minister to lead the country to a repeat vote.
Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis embarked 26 June 2023 on his second term as Greece's prime minister with a vow to accelerate institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory - 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament, thanks to a law for repeat elections that grants the winning party 50 bonus seats - for the second time in five weeks. Crediting Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the erstwhile EU debt laggard, voters gave the conservatives their widest winning margin in almost 50 years.
The recent deadly sinking of an overcrowded trawler failed to garner a mention. Instead, three small nationalist parties with anti-migration policies garnered between them nearly 13 percent of the vote. The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) gained around 18% of the vote — worse than the result at the previous election in May. The center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) received almost 13% of the vote, while the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) received more than 7% and the ultra-nationalist Spartans party has around 5%. Left-wing party MeRA25, founded by former Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, did not pass the 3% threshold required to enter parliament.
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