The end of an era and a new one rising

Dear reader,

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 (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) 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?