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Greece’s protest parties: Syriza and other radicals

May 31st 2014  ATHENS  From the print edition

Anti-bail-out parties won two-fifths of the vote

Golden Dawn on the march to Strasbourg

IT COULD have been far worse. As pollsters had predicted, the ruling centre-right New Democracy party of Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, was pushed into second place in the European elections by Syriza, a far-left party led by Alexis Tsipras. His fiery anti-German rhetoric and threats to rip up Greece’s bail-out agreement find favour with austerity-battered Greeks. Another “protest” party, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, captured almost 10% of the vote and came third, even though its leaders are being held in jail on charges of running a criminal organisation.

Yet Greece looks no more unstable than it did before the elections. Syriza’s margin of victory was just under four percentage points, not enough for Karolos Papoulias, the president, to heed Mr Tsipras’s demands for a snap general election. Mr Samaras’s coalition partner, the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), running under a new centre-left umbrella called Elia (Olive Tree), did better than the opinion polls had forecast. Together, New Democracy and Elia finished four points ahead of Syriza. New Democracy also won 11 of 13 regional governor’s posts being contested in local elections held at the same time as the European vote.

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A new left-of-centre party, To Potami (The River), took 6.5% of the vote, which would otherwise have gone to Pasok or Syriza. Founded at the start of the year by Stavros Theodorakis, a television journalist, it lost support as the election neared, with voters complaining that its campaign was poorly organised and its platform too vague, but it still got two MEPs.

Mr Samaras’s coalition has only a two-seat majority in parliament, but Evangelos Venizelos, the Pasok leader, is now hopeful of winning back two prominent defectors sitting as independents. With six Golden Dawn lawmakers absent pending trial, it should be easier for Mr Samaras to push through parliament yet another set of structural reforms demanded by the European Union and the IMF. The reforms are a condition for Greece to continue talks with international creditors on reducing the public debt, still unsustainably high at 175% of GDP in 2013. If a debt deal is done this year, and if the economy picks up as expected, Greece’s chances of emerging from its bail-out programme would brighten.

Some observers are puzzled that Syriza has so far been unable to topple Mr Samaras’s frail coalition. Six years of recession, an average fall in wages of around 30% and a jobless rate of 26.7%, have left Greeks angry and depressed. Voters made their feelings clear: anti-bail-out parties that won seats in the European Parliament together took more than 40% of the vote.

Young Greeks are among Syriza’s most enthusiastic backers. The party promises to restore the minimum monthly wage to the pre-crisis level of €750 ($1020), hand out cash incentives to revive farming, renationalise companies that have been privatised and patch up the social safety net.

Yet older voters are wary. Some members of Syriza’s radical faction still insist that Greece would do better by defaulting on its huge debt and leaving the euro. Manolis Glezos, a 91-year-old former communist who will be the oldest member of the European Parliament, suggests that the party’s welfare programme could be financed through a tax on bank deposits. Business people will keep a close eye on Rena Dourou, the first politician from Syriza to win a big administrative post. She edged out the Pasok incumbent to become governor of the Attica district surrounding Athens—a job with such a large budget, including a €10 billion chunk of EU funding, that the person who holds it is often described as a “mini-prime minister”.

Greece’s protest parties: Syriza and other radicals | The Economist

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