Votes are being held for Greece’s parliamentary elections, the first since the country’s economy is no longer subject to close scrutiny and scrutiny by international lenders who provided bailout funds during the nearly decade-long financial crisis.
The two main contenders in Sunday’s vote are Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, a Harvard-educated former bank manager, and Alexis Tsipras, 48, who heads the left-wing Syriza party and served as prime minister during several of the elections. most turbulent years of the financial crisis.
While Mitsotakis has been steadily leading in opinion polls, a newly introduced proportional representation electoral system makes it unlikely that whoever wins the election will be able to garner enough seats in Greece’s 300-member parliament to form a government without seeking coalition partners.
The winner of Sunday’s elections will have three days to negotiate a coalition with one or more other parties. Failing that, the mandate to form a government is given to the second largest party. But deep divisions between the two main parties and the four smaller parties expected to enter parliament will make it difficult to form a coalition, making a run-off election on July 2 likely.
The runoff election would be held under a new electoral law that makes it easier for a winning party to form a government by giving it a bonus of up to 50 seats in parliament.
A total of 32 parties are vying for votes, although opinion polls have shown that only six parties have a realistic chance of passing the 3 percent threshold to secure seats in parliament.
Greece’s once-dominant socialist party, PASOK, is likely to be at the center of all coalition talks. Overtaken by Syriza during the financial crisis of 2009-2018, the party scores around 10 percent. The ringleader, Nikos Androulakis, 44, was at the center of a wiretapping scandal that saw his phone targeted for surveillance.
With a poll of around 10 percent, PASOK would be vital in any coalition deal, but Androulakis’ poor relationship with Mitsotakis, whom he accuses of covering up the wiretapping scandal, means a deal with the Conservatives is unlikely. His relationship with Tsipras is also bad and he accuses him of trying to extort PASOK voters.
The far-right Greek party, founded by an imprisoned former lawmaker with a history of neo-Nazi activities, was barred from participating by the Supreme Court. His former party, Golden Dawn, which grew to become the third largest in Greece during the financial crisis, was considered a criminal organization.
campaign
In the run-up to the election, Mitsotakis had a double-digit lead in opinion polls, but saw that lead fade after a rail disaster on February 28 killed 57 people after an intercity passenger train was put on the same track as an approaching freight train. It was later revealed that train stations were poorly staffed and the safety infrastructure was broken and outdated.
The government was also beset by a surveillance scandal in which prominent Greek politicians, including Androulakis, and journalists discovered spyware on their phones. The Prime Minister said he was unaware of Androulakis’ phone tapping and would not have allowed it had he known. But the revelations deepened mistrust between the country’s political parties at a time when consensus can be desperately needed.
Tsipras has campaigned heavily against the rail disaster and wiretapping scandal.
Mitsotakis has been in power since the 2019 election and has seen unexpectedly high growth, a sharp fall in unemployment and a country poised to return to a level of investment in the global bond market for the first time since entering the 2010 lost access to the market. of its financial crisis.
Debts from the International Monetary Fund were repaid early. European governments and the IMF pumped 280 billion euros ($303 billion) into the Greek economy in emergency loans between 2010 and 2018 to prevent the eurozone member from going bankrupt. In return, they demanded punitive cost-cutting measures and reforms that saw the country’s economy shrink by a quarter.
A severe recession and years of bailout left Greece with a whopping national debt that reached 400 billion euros ($433 billion) last December and household incomes that will likely take another decade to recover.
The other three parties with realistic prospects for parliamentary seats are the Greek Communist Party, or KKE, led by Dimitris Koutsoumbas; the left-wing European Realistic Disobedience Front (MeRA25), led by Tsipras’s flamboyant former finance minister; and the right-wing Elliniki Lysi, or Greek Solution, led by Kyriakos Velopoulos.
The KKE, a staple of Greek politics, has seen a solid core of support of around 4.5-5.5 percent over the past decade, while Varoufakis’ party just passed the parliamentary threshold of 3 percent. Velopoulos’ party elected 10 lawmakers in 2019 and looks set to return to parliament.