Chaos of coalition looming for Greece

IT WILL be Greece’s most critical – and uncertain – election in decades. As the Greeks head to the polls today, disillusioned voters look set to severely punish the country’s two main parties, which are being held responsible for Greece’s dire economic and financial straits.

Such is the current frustration amongst the populus with the socialist PASOK party and conservative leaning New Democracy party, which have been alternating in power for the past 38 years, that neither is expected to garner enough votes to form a government.

Days of wrangling over forming a coalition will probably ensue, with the prospect – alarming to Greece’s lenders and much of the country’s population – of another round of elections if they fail, landing Greece back at square one again and facing an expensive second vote.

Public anger has been so high that politicians have been forced to maintain low-profile campaigns for fear of physical attacks on the streets in a country battered by business closures and hundreds of thousands of job losses.

The last opinion polls published before a two-week blackout ahead of the election showed PASOK and New Democracy haemorrhaging support since the last election in 2009. Their support has reached historic lows, plunging to percentages last seen in the mid-1970s after the 1974 fall of the seven-year military dictatorship.

The stakes then – for both parties – couldn’t be higher.

Entirely dependent on billions of euros worth of international rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, Greece must impose yet more austerity measures next month if it is to keep the money flowing and prevent a default and a potentially disastrous exit from the euro.

New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras is expected to come in first, thereby benefiting from a bonus 50 seats in the 300-member parliament. But even with that he would fall far short of the 151 seats needed to form a government. Opinion polls projected him winning not more than 25.5 per cent.

PASOK, which stormed to victory in the last parliamentary election in 2009 with more than 43 per cent, and George Papandreou at its helm, has seen its support collapse over the past two years. Now headed by former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos, it is fighting off a challenge by anti-bailout left-wing parties, with opinion polls projecting PASOK to win between 14.5 per cent and 19 per cent.

If that happens, it would be the lowest since November 1974, when the party won 13.5 per cent just two months after being founded.

Venizelos warned that Greece faces default and mass poverty if voters back anti-bailout parties.

“Sunday will decide whether we remain in Europe and the euro, and we stay on a course that is difficult but safe, after having covered most of the distance, to finally emerge from the crisis and [austerity],” he said during his final campaign rally in central Athens on Friday night.

“Or it will [determine] whether we embark on an adventure, sliding back many decades and taking the country to default, to leave Greeks facing mass poverty.”

“This whole situation has destroyed our dreams,” said Haris Manolis, a worker at a steel factory where employees have been on strike for six months in protest at layoffs and wage cuts. “We have no more dreams. We have one: to overturn them so that we can make new ones. That’s it.”

Up to an unprecedented ten parties have been projected to win more than the 3 per cent minimum threshold for a parliamentary seat. That includes the extreme right Golden Dawn, which has been riding high on the emotive issue of illegal immigration, promising to clean up crime-ridden, ghetto-like city neighbourhoods and mine the country’s borders to stop more migrants getting in.

There is much concern over the implications of forming a coalition government in the country. “Whoever dares to torpedo the creation of a coalition government won’t even receive his own vote in the next elections,” Athens University political science professor Elias Nicolacopoulos said.

“Whatever they may say now, however much they raise the rhetoric, in ten days maximum they are obliged to agree on forming a government. Otherwise, they will be unable to walk on the street… Right now, people expect – even if they vote for anti-austerity parties – responsible behaviour on forming a government.”