The end of an era and a new one rising
Dear Member,
We are sending our weekly round-up from Greece on Monday because there were many developments last week, and we had to process them. Below you’ll find all you need to know:
The New Democracy party won the country’s parliamentary elections, with voters giving Kyriakos Mitsotakis 40.55% of the vote and another four-year term as prime minister. He left the main opposition SYRIZA far behind with a meager 17.84%. Communist party KKE got 7.7%, PASOK/KINAL 11.85%.
All shades of far-right were elected in the Greek Parliament: neo-nazi far right (Spartiates, the Trojan Horse of Golden Dawn - 4.64%), Christian far-right (Niki - 3.7%). Also, Elliniki Lysi (4.44%), had threatened media with legal action (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) should we call it ‘far-right’, so we won’t write it is. The eighth party elected was leader-centered Plefsi Eleftherias, which does not even have a proper manifesto. Yanis Varoufakis’s DiEM25 failed to enter the Parliament as it did not achieve the 3% threshold.
A third of the new Greek parliament (100 seats out of 300) is center to the left.
Two-thirds (192 seats) is neoliberal right to ultra far right.
An unprecedented result in Greece’s contemporary history
In the heart of the summer, Greece has entered a prolonged political winter.
"ND is today the most powerful center-right party in Europe," Mitsotakis told delighted supporters in Athens.
The victory was swiping, yet the momentum had become evident in the first elections.
ND’s 40% is not an unprecedented share of the vote for the winning party. ND’s percentage was slightly lower in the 2019 elections. However, we cannot recall a similar victory for a party accused of wiretapping, responsible for 107th in the Freedom of the Press RSF ranking, to push-backs, disastrous pandemic management, misuse of public funds, and inflation.
Greeks seem to have chosen to ignore the growing democratic deficit; they decided to ignore the cost of living crisis and stuck with Mitsotakis’s promises for lower taxes and improved public health (despite the NHS having being brought to its knees under ND mandate and the plan for health privatization being included in the party’s manifesto).
The triumph goes further than that, though. Because ND achieved this victory while competing with a range of small far-right parties, their dangerous for democracy party-banning legislation not only didn’t reach its goal but gave the glow of persecuted heroes to those banned - especially the former Golden Dawn leading figure Kasidiaris, who from his cell in prison gave the signal to his supporters to vote for ‘Spartiates’ (see more in the next section).
Also, ND defeated their primary opponent soundly, SYRIZA, by leaving them behind with an almost 23% margin. It is illustrative that if one adds SYRIZA and PASOK percentages (the centrist parties), they are under 30% and still lag a good 10% behind ND. “This has never happened before in the almost half-century of Metapolitefsis (i.e., the period after the junta starting in the 80s and marking radical progressive reforms in Greece, which only then became a proper democracy),” journalist Giorgos Karelias wrote (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in an op-ed, putting things in historical perspective. “None of the parties seem capable of stopping the advance of ND,” he added. A new political institution will probably be needed to express the progressive part of society, yet this is nowhere on the horizon.
It should be noted that abstention from the elections hit a record high. Indifference? Disappointment? Both?
The election result was shocking for progressive people in the country. It undoubtedly depicts a deeply regressive turn of society.
Greek society is generally quite conservative, yet it appears it has been steadily turning towards fascism in these last years.
We remember that in 2012 the Golden Dawn was elected in Parliament with some half a million votes. But back then, even conservative ND was not as far to the right as today’s ND. Golden Dawn was the only party back then calling migrants “invaders,” now, the term has been expressed by the very PM’s lips, and the President of Democracy is happily posing in front of the Evros Wall.
The vote came 11 days after the migrant boat tragedy off Greece in which about 500 people are thought to have died. “Three days of mourning were held; however, the disaster had little effect on the campaign, and Greeks voted to maintain economic stability,” the BBC wrote (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). This is telling.
The handling of the migration issue under the ND mandate ‘trained’ the Greek society to normalise treating the weak as lesser people who should be confined in camps and even be pushed-back. The Greeks compromised with being turned into Europe’s police officers, accused of exercising violence against these people in numerous instances. Men in uniforms ‘executed orders’ in this direction. Other Greeks disregarded suffering and despair and maybe began to believe it was OK. More so, since they were all the time hearing mainstream media echoing this normalization: only after people ended up at the bottom of the sea made a famous trash TV persona comment that they deprived the Greeks of ambulances who tried to help the rescued ones.
The following day after the elections, Alarm Phone published this video (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), with alarming images allegedly coming out of Kos island. They claimed that a group of 14 people, also children, that arrived on the island had been caught by masked commandos, beaten, placed inside in the back of a van in plastic handcuffs, and their eyes were taped shut.
History has shown how all this ends.
Who is who: Spartiates & Niki
We shall give you who are Spartiates and Niki parties elected in the new Greek Parliament. This is so that you gain a deeper perspective on what is happening in the country's political scene.
→ Spartiates:
In the second election round, the party appeared out of the blue as a likely-to-be-elected contester after being pushed by jailed neo-Nazi leading figure Ilias Kasidiaris, who Parliament and courts had barred from running. Spartiates were founded by Vassilis Stingas in 2017 but gained traction when bolstered by Kasidiaris. Neonazis threw leaflets in the streets before elections, writing, “Kasidiaris supports Spartiates.”
The party got 4.64 percent from 241,625 voters and 12 seats in the 300-member Parliament.
59-year-old Stingas had passed from various political parties, including ND; he was notably in far-right anti-Semitic LAOS (from which three previous ND government ministers politically descended) and from ELASYN of another Golden Dawn leading figure Ioannis Lagos.
In his CV, he mentions (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) he is working in the food industry while at the same time doing some journalism and political TV shows.
In his account on Facebook, Stingas had characterized the Turks as “Mongols,” former Ministry of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias as “Americans’ and Jews’ employee,” Alexis Tsipras a “traitor,” North Macedonia citizens as “gypsy Skopjians” - according (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to Avgi newspaper reporting.
Not so long ago, Stingas appeared as a member of Kasidiaris’s (later banned) party ‘Ellines gia tin Patrida,’ as a photo published by the daily EfSyn showed. The party later deleted the image.
Seven of the Spartiates candidates were in an earlier list of Kasidiaris’s party.
It gets even more interesting regarding the party’s spokesperson Charis Katsivardas. He is the lawyer (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)who some weeks ago made a big fuss about the film Shower Boys, which was screened in a school, supposedly causing the reaction of a pupil’s family. The family sued the teacher claiming that the awarded film (in the Ministry of Education platform) was unsuitable for the pupils’ age. Their lawyer was Karsivardas, who claimed that the kid was “in a terrible psychological situation and shocked as it is a freaky spectacle. We are discussing boys' sexual approach in the toilets shown to Primary School.”
Too much of a coincidence.
The same person had sent (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) an out of the courts' settlement to Education Minister Kerameos about an event where Drag Queens would read fairy tales to children.
It is interesting, though, to note that Stingas, before the elections, publicly denounced (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) Golden Dawn violence.
How sincere could this be, since he accepted Kasidiaris’s support and thanked him publicly (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) afterward?
Even sad is that Spartiates achieved their highest share of the votes (9.2%) in the age group 17-34. The lowest one was in the over-65 group (1.3%).
So, the youth aren’t as progressive as we assumed.
→ Niki
“With God’s fear, we shall keep going, fighting for Hellenism’s victory,”: Niki’s head Dimitris Natsios stated (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) after the party was elected in Parliament.
You’ve got the spirit, but here is a better glimpse of the party’s manifesto:
-They are against abortion; they hailed the change of legislation in the USA
-They are against sex education, which they consider has a ‘fatal impact’ on the kids' souls.
-They consider homosexuality a choice, not a biological reality.
-They are proponents of the Great Replacement theory.
-The claim debtors should be working for free to pay their debt off.
The party’s leader is a teacher of Religion who regularly writes articles on religious and national issues. Niki appeared (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) before the first elections. It was formed in 2019 from a group of people who had reacted fiercely to the Prespes agreement, which resolved the long rivalry between Greece and North Macedonia.
Niki is openly affiliated with ecclesiastical organizations and certain Mount Athos monasteries. They are pro-Russian and characterized Greece’s support of Ukraine as “murderous.”
End of an era
Three days after SYRIZA’s crushing defeat, its leader of 15 years, Alexis Tsipras, resigned from the post.
This decision was taken after a meeting of the SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance Executive Bureau and was announced on Thursday.
“I understand the need for a new wave in SYRIZA. And I have decided to step aside so it can go ahead. I have confidence in the people of our party. In the endless forces of society and the Left. Therefore, I decided to propose the election of a new leadership by the party's members, as stipulated in its constitution. An immediate recourse to the relevant procedures. Which, of course, I will not be a candidate for. But I will be present before, during, and after them,” he said (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).
48-year-old Alexis Tsipras was first elected as leader of the party in 2008 (he was 33 then) and remained in this position until June 29, 2023.
With Tsipras' resignation, a historical circle is coming to an end.
He has been the youngest leader of a Parliamentary party in Greece’s contemporary history. Tsipras took the lead right at the threshold of a stormy period for the country.
In 2008, the so-called ‘December rebellion’ occurred when the youth took to the streets of Athens massively and rioted after 15-year-old pupil Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead on 6 December by a policeman in the Exarheia area.
SYRIZA was then called Synaspismos, a small Parliamentary Party of the Left.
Then, in 2010, Greece, under the mandate of PASOK and George Papandreou, went under the spell of the IMF, the European Commission, and the ECB (the so-called Troika) and signed Memoranda that doomed the country to harsh financial austerity for more than a decade. During these years, Greece lost some 25% of its GDP, something unprecedented for a country in peacetime.
In May 2011, the Greeks started flooding Syntagma Square in front of the Parliament and, gradually, many squares across the city and the country. They demanded democracy and an end to austerity. It was a watershed moment, as the movement was massive, fought on for a couple of months, and was ultimately crushed by the police.
It was this movement that ‘sent’ SYRIZA to the Parliament as the main opposition party in 2012. They found their political expression in this party, with the young, charismatic leader speaking a new language and promising a no-compromise with the Troika.
The police had crashed the movement in late summer 2011, and now it was up to SYRIZA to live up to some great expectations.
In January 2015, SYRIZA was elected government - and Tsipras Prime Minister. They formed a government with Anexarititi Ellines party.
“We are every letter of this Constitution,” Tsipras famously said during a speech in Parliament.
Tsipras had to carry out a titanic task: negotiate with Greece’s lenders and achieve an agreement to reinstitute the country’s lost dignity and pride.
After five months of negotiations, which weren’t fruitful, on 27 June 2015, SYRIZA called for a referendum. Citizens had to vote NO or YES to the then-proposed agreement by the Troika.
This was a massive moment in Greece’s history, as this top democratic procedure hadn’t taken place in the country since 1974 when the citizens voted for Parliamentary Democracy as a polity system instead of Constitutional Monarchy.
The referendum took place on 5 July 2015. Greeks voted with their banks closed, while all European and financial institutions plus mainstream media were directly threatening them that they would ‘sink’ the country should the result be NO.
Despite this, the Greeks backed SYRIZA and Tsipras and voted 61.3% NO.
The long-expected party for democracy, however, finished before it started, as Tsipras famously turned this NO into a YES, and signed the Third Memorandum with the Troika in August 2015.
Despite that, he was re-elected in office in September 2015 elections.
The rest is history. SYRIZA gradually turned into a conventional center-left party. They even ended up voting on a lot of ND’s bills.
Alexis Tsipras marked a turbulent era. Under his mandate as a PM, for the first time after some 30 years (1981 first PASOK government), people believed the country would improve. When, however, history called for him to say the Big YES or the Big NO -as Greek poet Kavafis put it- he didn’t manage to live up to the circumstances. He might not have stood the (indeed) immense pressure - which is humane. Yet, history does not do psychoanalysis when writing its pages.
Now that Tsipras stepped down, we cannot help wondering again: What if he had lived up to the role the people chose him for back then? Does SYRIZA’s defeat mark the defeat of the Left for decades to come.
PS: PM Mitsotakis, in a resentful statement (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), called Tsipras’ resignation “expected” and argued that SYRIZA “identified itself with toxicity, with divisive speech and deafening ineffectiveness.”
Read
“Greece is trying to cover up its role in the Pylos shipwreck which caused 100s of deaths on 13 June (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - Documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports & partners show the Greek coast guard went as far as tampering with official statements given by survivors.”
Here are the Ministers in new Mitsotakis’ government (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) (He founded a ‘Ministry of Family’ - we’ll get back to you with more analysis on this) - New government has 60 members, 15 of whom are women.
Majority of diaspora Greeks voted for New Democracy (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
SYRIZA rushes to elect new leader after Tsipras’ resignation (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
Tourist dies on Thassos while waiting for an ambulance (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
Train with 400 passengers on board stuck in tunnel for several hour (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)s
Search in Eva Kaili’s house in Athens in presence of Belgian prosecutor (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
George Clooney on Mykonos to attend Omega event (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
Package holidays in Greece, Spain and Turkey soar in price (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
That’s all from last week,
Stay safe,
The AL team
