Who will Greeks vote for? 🗳️

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Dear Member,

This is our weekly round-up from Greece.

Election Sunday has arrived. The latest opinion polls favored ruling ND. Yet, there have been quite a few times during the crisis years that polls have not proven accurate. This year, less than half a million young people will vote for the first time—those raised during the financial crisis and experienced a pandemic. Let’s see what happens.

Tempi victims’ relatives have filed a lawsuit against those responsible for the deadly accident. Among others, they sued the PM. Mitsotakis later said that “the justified anger of the victims’ relatives does not justify such kind of behavior,” with ND's communication mechanism trying later to persuade he did not say what we understood he said. Also, a demonstration of the dead people’s relatives never happened for the mainstream media.

Two out of three Greek citizens do not visit a doctor when they need it due to financial difficulties, the National Statistics Authority ELSTAT reported. This can explain Greece’s excess mortality, as reported by Eurostat, and why only 45% of Greeks are satisfied with the healthcare system, as stated in another survey. Healthcare will be a factor shaping election preferences.

Here comes the youth

A day before elections Sunday, the political landscape has presented no surprises.

The opinion polls favored ruling ND, with SYRIZA following with a smaller or larger margin. Six parties are expected to enter the Parliament - PASOK/KINAL, Communist Party KKE, Elliniki Lysi, and DiEM25.

The most likely outcome would be that Greece won’t have a government on Sunday, as it is highly unlikely that any party will take the necessary share of votes.

It is indicative that the Greek government requested (Opens in a new window) on Tuesday the disbursement of the third tranche of its EU Recovery Fund, with the European Commission agreeing to an exceptionally long five-month period to evaluate the request. “EURACTIV understands that the Greek government’s request for a five-month evaluation – which comes only days before a hotly-contested national election – indicates that it may not be possible to form a government after Sunday’s vote,” the report noted.

Athens Live reckons that these are very unpredictable elections for several factors.

The more than 430,000 people, ranging in age from 16 to 21 that will be eligible to cast ballots for the first time on Sunday could prove a catalyst.

This is why politicians vying for votes have turned to YouTube and TikTok (Opens in a new window): To win over the youth.

However, this is no easy call as thirteen years of crises have cast their heavy shadow, and many consider their lives damaged or destroyed.

Profiling the youth 17-34 in the country, the think tank Eteron Institute recently reached some interesting conclusions. Their dominant emotions -the research showed- are rage, despair, and shame. Some 59.5 percent of those asked blamed the incumbent government for the conditions that led to the Tempi train crash, while 58.3 blamed all previous governments. According to the same survey, eight out of ten said they intend to vote on May 21.

Some more conclusions:

The Tempi accident was experienced as a ‘moral shock.’ The transformation of rage to a moral duty to undertake action explains the massive influx of people with no previous links to parties or activist groups to protest.

However, their voting is influenced more by High Prices-Inflation (43.4%), Economy-Development (43%), and Justice-Transparency (40%), than the Tempi Tragedy (18.5%). At the same time, the institutions they mainly consider unreliable are the political parties (88%), and the government (75.4%), while they don’t trust the media and TV (86.7%).

As to the Inflation factor, it is worth noting an incident that was reported this week:

A 30-year-old mother was caught stealing milk from a supermarket in Volos, as she had no money to feed her baby. She was sentenced (Opens in a new window) to 20 days in prison, with three years suspension.

Athens Live understands that there is a great number of people who have chosen to vote for a party, but not wholeheartedly. For example, some people will vote for SYRIZA, not because they believe this party can improve their lives significantly, but because under SYRIZA, their lives will not be as bad as under ND.

In short, many people will cast a negative vote. Not for the best but for the “lesser evil.”

The great majority will break its silence on Sunday.

The PM’s “unjustified” behavior

This week, the first lawsuit was filed against those responsible for the deadly Tempi train crash.

Relatives of 57 passengers who died during the train collision at Tempi in central Greece on 28 February filed charges against Railway OSE administration officials, Hellenic Train, and the Regulatory Energy Authority. Also against PM Mitsotakis, ex-Transportation minister Achilleas Karamanlis, State Minister responsible for Transportation Giorgos Gerapetritis, Transport Ministers of the two previous governments, and against former and incumbent OSE presidents and managing directors.

The lawsuit was filed with the prosecutor of the Larissa Appeals Court. It aims at opening up the investigation to 15 years before the accident.

“I regret that this issue is being instrumentalized in this way a few days before the elections, and I believe that the justified anger of the victims’ relatives does not justify such kind of behavior,”

PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated later in an interview with ANT1 TV (Opens in a new window) when called to comment on the scheduled railway strike and the lawsuit in question.

Mitsotakis claimed that “many things have changed in the railway” and that “they have committed that the infamous contract for full signage of our main line will be concluded till September.” He added that he has talked with some victims’ relatives, he “fully understands their rage, and he is the first who wants justice to be done at all levels.” He concluded, though, that “justice is done by justice. Not by our political opponents nor by third critics.”

His statement on “instrumentalization” and “unjustified behavior” caused great outrage. The PM “accused the Tempi victims’ parents of instrumentalizing the tragedy,” SYRIZA spokeswoman Popi Tsapanidou stated (Opens in a new window).

In the next hours, ND officials and social media ‘army’ embarked on a gaslighting campaign to persuade people that the PM’s answer corresponded to the first question about the railway scheduled strike.

Website Ellinika Hoaxes, which supposedly debunks hoaxes in the Greek press and social media, rushed in defense of the PM:

“Edited video - Misleading presentation of the PM’s reply about Tempi,” the report claimed (Opens in a new window).

Ellinika Hoaxes claimed that the video circulating in news websites and social media was edited and thus out of context as it omitted the journalist’s comment on the railway strike and presented only the lawsuit issue.

However, the statement they cited as full-included the quote in question untouched.

SYRIZA-affiliated newspaper Avgi sued (Opens in a new window) Ellinika Hoaxes, “denouncing the slanderous and fake claims for avgi.gr (Opens in a new window)” they noted - as Hoaxes included Avgi in the sources reproducing the PM's statement in a supposedly misleading way. The newspaper called on Hoaxes to redress the report as it “published the full interview video” and has not edited the content, so they did not disinform the public. Otherwise, they would demand compensation.

This week, Tempi victims’ relatives protested (Opens in a new window) in Serres City against Achilleas Karamanlis’s candidacy with ND. Karamanlis was Transport Minister when the accident occurred and had claimed in Parliament that there were no safety issues with the railway.

“I do not forget - 57 souls ask for vindication” was the main slogan of the demonstration, in which unions, social institutions, associations, and hundreds of citizens participated.

The newly founded Association of Tempi Accident Striken People organized the event.

The Association aims to punish all those responsible or murderously irresponsible for the accident so that something like that will not happen again. They ask for the accident to be considered a crime, for the railway to stop operating until the safety works have been concluded, and that after the elections, the Parliament will urgently realize these works.

This demonstration never happened for mainstream media.

PS: This week, the suburban railway in Patras was interrupted (Opens in a new window) after a train broke down on the tracks. The doors wouldn't open. A young woman suffered a panic attack.

Who visits a doctor when needed?

Two out of three Greek citizens (66.8%), whether having social insurance or not, don’t visit a doctor when needed for a medical checkup, examination, or treatment, citing limited finances, according to a Greek Statistics Authority ELSTAT report (Opens in a new window) published on Wednesday.

Simply put, people in Greece cannot afford to pay for supposedly free healthcare services.

This could explain why Greece recorded the second highest excess mortality in the EU (+10%), after the Netherlands (+12%), while the EU excess mortality generally was at low levels in March 2023, according to Eurostat (Opens in a new window).

It shall be remembered that Greece has one of the world's highest shares of private health spending. According to the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises SEV 2020 press release (Opens in a new window) based on the then-recent OASA report ‘Health at a Glance,’ in Greece, 35% of health spending is paid by citizens with social insurance, while the OASA average is 21%. This is one of the highest shares in the world, with India being at the top at 65%, Mexico at 41%, Russia at 40%, and China at 36%.

At the same time, the national health insurance system covers 61% of the total health spending as opposed to 71% in OASA countries, while 4% is covered by private health insurance.

According to the OASA data, 18% of the private health spending goes to doctors and ‘external practices’ (operating in public hospitals in the afternoon, where you pay), 14% to dentists, 31% to hospitalization -9% in OASA- and 37% in medicine and other treatment.

According to the ELSTAT report, 54% of the citizens needed a medical examination or treatment during the survey period. Of that 66.8%: 24.3% did not receive health service at the time they needed it. In addition to 68% of those who could not afford it, 2.5% waited for the health problem they faced to go away, and 1.6% did not go to the doctor because of the long waiting list. Four out of five, 77.2%, in need of dental care do not go to the dentist also for financial reasons. The percentage of unmet needs for dental care last year was the highest recorded in the last five years.

88.2% ask friends for moral and financial help.

13.2% stated that they are socially excluded and isolated, while 37.6% reported that they experienced loneliness for some time.

In one of the largest and most detailed reports (Opens in a new window) on Health presented on 12 May by the Political Economics and Social Research Institute IPOKE, Greece ranks at the very bottom of the European countries covering patients’ needs.

More specifically, the uncovered citizens’ needs have increased from 10% to 27% in the last year.

Only 45% of Greeks stated they were satisfied with the healthcare system, as opposed to 96.5% of the Swiss, 94% of the Danes, and 91% of the Spaniards.

IPOKE president and Health Finances professor Ioannis Yfantopoulos explained that “the decade-long economic crisis, the three Memoranda, and then the Covid19 pandemic influenced the NHS underfunding in Greece significantly.”

Since 2019 (the first year ND was in power), the bad course of the health sector in the country started being reversed - but not in the public sector. This means the cost was transferred from the public sector to the citizens, creating catastrophic spending.

“This means that a Greek may sacrifice his/her child’s milk to buy medicine,” Professor Yfantopoulos explained.

The research concluded that Greece is the only country in EU-27 with the largest underfundings in the NHS.

Indicatively, the research noted:

-For the total health spending per head, Greece recorded a 22.8% decrease when in EU-27, it increased by 16.7% on average. This means a 39.5% decrease.

-Public spending per head: 32.5% decrease in Greece, 15.3% increase on average in EU-27.

-Total medicine spending per head: 26.2% decrease in Greece, as opposed to a 3.6% increase on average in EU-27.

-Public medicine spending per head: 51.8% in Greece compared to a 6.7% decrease on average in EU-27.

Given all these, plus the government’s stance during the pandemic and its steadfast refusal to boost the NHS, the following PM’s electoral promise (Opens in a new window) cannot, in any case, be taken seriously - He stated:

“We can’t have patients suffering in the corridors, to wait for months for an operation. We will upgrade the Emergencies in 80 hospitals, fully upgrade 156 Health Centres, and hire 10,000 nurses and doctors.”

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