16
votes
Greek elections: Mitsotakis hails conservative win as mandate for reform
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- Title
- Greek conservatives eye Mitsotakis majority in fresh election
- Published
- Jun 25 2023
- Word count
- 766 words
Full results can be found on the official website of the Ministry of Interior: https://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/v/home/en/
While New Democracy's "second government in a row" is a rarity in Greek politics, I find two things about the political climate quite bad:
The Greek government currently does not have any real opposition. Syriza is dying (and has been dying for a while). Syriza and PASOK combined do not have enough seats to even be a proper opposition. However, even in the previous government (2019-2023), when Syriza had enough seats to be a proper opposition, they failed spectacularly at that.
Three far-right parties now entered the parliament. Normally, it would be just one (hellenic solution), but now the "victory" party (christian fascism) and the "spartans" party (a proxy supported by jailed members of the golden dawn nazi criminal organisation) managed not only to enter the parliament, but gather 13% of the vote when combined together.
Things do seem quite worrying, not only for the Greek left but also for the Greek right.
Wtf?
How did things get like that?
To be perfectly honest, I am not 100% certain. But likely factors are:
The rise of populist/far-right parties all around Europe,
The attempted ban on far-right parties, proposed by ND for the first elections in May, worked the opposite way and turned the (jailed) golden dawn members into "martyrs", in a way,
People from the conservative branch of ND, disappointed by Mitsotakis's neoliberal/centre-appealing politics, decided to vote another party and didn't have any other choices (ND is a catch-all party in the Greek right, and generally the only big right-wing party),
People disappointed by Syriza's politics, similarly,
The continuing migrant crisis in Greece, including the events of 2020 in Evros,
The general rise of anti-systemic parties post-2008 in Greece, including the original core of Syriza (& its spin-off parties),
Low participation in the elections
The (former) golden dawn "party", before its leadership was jailed, was the third biggest party at some point during during the epitome of the post-2008 economic crisis. IIRC, their biggest percentage in a poll(?) was ~11%. After they were banned, we had the 2019 elections, where hellenic solution got ~4% of the vote, primarily from North Greece.
Niki appeared for the first time in the May 2023 elections. Not sure who these guys "stole" votes from, but the church was very much supporting them. Not the official church, mind you, but individual priests in many churches. They also got a lot of votes in North Greece. We know that separatist monks from Mount Athos (an autonomous monastic community in North Greece) are supporting the party (even though they can't vote because Mount Athos is autonomous from Greece). The granddaughter(?) of a very very popular, soon-to-be-saint monk (Elder Paisios) was a candidate in that party, too. There are assumptions that russia is funding the party, but there's no solid proof yet, because the party is so new.
The sudden 5% of the "spartans" party (i.e. the proxy of the golden dawn) is the most shocking thing. The 3.5~4% of people who voted for random far-right parties the last time (May 2023) might have united to vote for these guys. There were several fascistoid parties with ~0.5% of the vote the last time; most of these probably voted for the spartans instead of voting for the coalition most of these parties made for the June 2023 elections. That coalition received 0.5% now too. The small difference in the May 2023 and June 2023 percentages in the above example are more or less offset by the much lower participation in the second elections.