Alexandros believes too many people have already “forgave” Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party and Greece’s prime minister since 2019. The Economics student at Panteion University in Athens laments that Mitsotakis is the favorite in the polls for the legislative elections this Sunday in Greece, ahead of the leftist Alexis Tsipras, of Syriza, and the socialist Nikos Androulakis, of Pasok. In less than three months, he says, the outrage that hundreds of thousands of Greeks took to the streets when 57 people died in a train crash in Tempe on February 28 has faded. The fact that more than half were students is loaded with symbolism.
If Greece enjoys a democratic regime today, it is partly thanks to the fact that, 50 years ago, the students of the Polytechnic University of Athens rebelled against the junta of colonels. On November 17, 1973, the military stormed the campus with tanks and killed dozens of young people. A year later the dictatorship fell and “the day of the Polytechnic” became a national holiday. That day, in schools there is no class, only the date is commemorated. The children chant in the courtyards the motto for which those students died: “Bread, education and freedom”.
Since then, university students have played a leading role in Greece. They are an amorphous force, with unions that do not respond to political parties, very active anarchist groups, the ever-present communist party —although in general elections it barely gets around 5% of the vote— and confronted with the anarchists, and other leftist groups. lowercase. They are a scattered force, but they have set the pace of protests in Greek society for decades.
Many students have already traveled home for the elections, because voting by mail is not allowed. Of the 10.4 million registered Greeks, 9.9 million have the right to vote. And a total of 440,000 young people are called to the polls for the first time. In these elections, those who turn 17 during the current year also premiere. Kimon Tsatsarakis, who is that age, is one of them. He has met another young man in the center of Athens to sell him a T-shirt. He will opt for the communists. “Here the politicians promise things that later they don’t do and the people continue to vote for them. In the European Union, we are always behind other countries. We need to fix the unemployment problem,” he says.
The second country in the EU with the most young people unemployed
Greece has reduced unemployment in this legislature that ends from 17.3% to the current 10.9% —below the 13.26% of Spain. But youth unemployment remains the second highest in Europe, at 24.2%, second only to Spain (29.5%). Jenny Bouton is 18 years old and distributes commercial leaflets in Ermou, the great shopping street of Athens. She earns 650 euros a month and intends to vote “rather to the right.” But she is critical: “Unemployment has dropped, but quality work has not increased.”
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The way out for many is abroad. Between 2010 and 2019, more than 319,000 young people emigrated, according to a study by Oxford University researcher Manolis Pratsinakis. Xenia, a 29-year-old architecture student at the Polytechnic University, plans to go to Barcelona when she finishes her degree. “I will vote to the left,” she maintains, “because this government is destroying the welfare state.”
At the Polytechnic there are dozens of anarchist posters calling for a boycott of the elections. On its walls there is barely a centimeter free without graffiti. One of them exhorts in Spanish: “Burn logs. Defend your neighborhood.” But in this faculty so loaded with leftist symbols there is room for everyone. As for Aggelikí and Marilene, two 19-year-old girls, who show off a phone with a sticker of the LGTBI flag and reveal that they will vote for New Democracy.
Students Haris (left) and Yannis (right) sit with a friend at the entrance to Panteion University in Athens, in front of several tables with electoral posters of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and other left-wing formations , on Thursday, May 18, 2023.Hibai Arbide Aza
Back at Panteion University, Alexandros thinks that Mitsotakis should have resigned the day after the train crash. “And instead of that,” adds his friend Eva, “the only one who resigned, the Minister of Transportation [Kostas A. Karamanlis], is now re-introduced on the New Democracy list.” Alexandros insists on an accusation that other students repeat: “Mitsotakis has tried to buy the vote of the youth with vouchers of 150 euros when he turns 18.” Just three weeks before the elections, the Prime Minister presented the so-called Youth Pass, a debit card with a balance of 150 euros that his Government intends to give to young people who turn 18 so that they can spend it on leisure, transport or tourism within Greece. The Mitsotakis Executive already put into practice during the pandemic the so-called Freedom Pass, another payment of 150 euros to young people who were vaccinated against covid.
Haris, 23, warns in the same Faculty of Economics: “Students will not be bribed.” He and his friend Yannis, like most of those consulted, prefer to provide only his first name. They say they feel anger at so much emigration. “Going abroad,” explains Haris, “doesn’t help the country grow. In the end, those of us who studied in Greece are underestimated.”
Neither of the two friends hides their ideological convictions. In Greece it is difficult to find students who declare themselves apolitical. At least once a course, some students take control of their centers and interrupt classes to claim something. Alexis Tsipras himself, leader of the leftist Syriza and former prime minister, led a multi-month occupation of his secondary school in the 1990-91 academic year. The takeovers of centers show the strength of the student movement, but they are so common that they rarely achieve their objective. Although young people have managed to knock down legislative projects, over the years, governments have learned to resist their onslaught.
Other young people believe that the only way to achieve their ends is to keep charging. Zeta, 19, does not expect anything from the current left: “She has shown her inability. I trust more in going out.”
Police to control the universities
The student battle of the last three years has focused on preserving university autonomy, the main legacy of the historic massacre at the Polytechnic. The police and the army have been banned from the campus ever since. The Mitsotakis government alleged in 2019 that autonomy had been perverted and created spaces of impunity for organized crime and drug trafficking. First, he approved a decree that allows the entry of the police into the faculties and, later, he founded a specific police force for the universities.
Nikiforos Vaios, a 26-year-old activist, member of EAAK (United and Independent Left Movement), a communist student platform that advocates assemblies as a form of social organization, denies that universities are lawless territories: “They don’t want to put an end to dealings, They want universities to stop being public. What they want is that the children of the working class cannot go”. The battle is not over. Although the university police force exists, it has not been deployed at the Polytechnic or at the University of Panteion. And on the campuses where it is present there have been clashes with students.
Artists also take to the streets
The Mitsotakis government has also met with the wrath of artists. In 2022, the Executive presented a project so that the titles of dramatic art, conservatories, film and dance schools stop being university and are equated to a technical baccalaureate. The artists took to the streets and occupied the main theaters in the country, against what they considered an attempt to favor private centers.
Thanos Papadogiannis, a 25-year-old former drag queen, actor and theater student, estimates that in recent years “young people have had to focus on surviving instead of protesting.” He sees no reason to vote for the majority progressive formations: “We were the artists who brought people out into the streets after the train accident, not the parties.”
The polls predict that this Sunday no formation will achieve a sufficient majority to add half plus one of the 300 deputies of Parliament. If so, a second round will have to be held on July 2. Whoever rules, the young Greeks will remain an uncomfortable and rebellious force.
A woman walks past a billboard of Syriza, the main opposition party led by Alexis Tsipras, on May 10, 2023 in Athens. Photo: Louisa Gouliamaki (AFP) | Video: EFE
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