The electoral map of Greece woke up this Monday painted almost entirely blue, the color of the conservative New Democracy (ND) party, led by the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55. Only in Rhodope, a small mountainous region on the border with Bulgaria, in which barely half of its 118,199 voters voted, did the red of Syriza, the main left-wing and opposition party, win. Sunday’s general election yielded the biggest difference between the first and second parties since 1974, when Greece held the first democratic elections after seven years of dictatorship. Neither the massive protests caused by the train crash on February 28, with 57 deaths, nor the spying scandal by the secret services on opponents, the military and journalists, have prevented the collapse of the left.
Now, the leaders of Syriza are wondering why almost 600,000 voters have abandoned them since the 2019 elections, a third of those they had. And what can they do to get them back?
The result has been so devastating that the leader of Syriza, the charismatic Alexis Tsipras, 48, did not hesitate to describe it on Sunday as “extremely negative”. Although he warned: “The electoral cycle is not over.” In effect, a repeat election is in the offing. The date is not official, but local media assume it will be June 25. The country’s president, Katerina Sakelaropulu, entrusted Mitsotakis with the formation of the government on Monday. The prime minister declined the coalition option, thus clearing the way for a second election. In that second call, a new electoral law will come into force that awards up to 50 seats to the list with the most votes. Thus, if Mitsotakis achieved a result similar to Sunday’s, he would be guaranteed an absolute majority.
No poll predicted that New Democracy would get twice as many points (40%) over Syriza (20%, with 71 seats). The Pasok socialists occupied third place, with 11.46% of the votes, and went from 22 to 41 seats. In the left field, they were the ones who celebrated the results the most. The communists of the KKE were in fourth place, with 7.23% (they went from 15 to 26 seats). And the ultranationalists of the Greek Solution reached 4.45%. Yanis Varufakis —a former finance minister with Syriza, who in 2019 won nine seats with his MeRA25 party, and who was running with Unidad Popular, the biggest split from Syriza in 2015— was left out of Parliament, failing to reach the required minimum of 3%.
Alexis Tsipras, leader of the leftist formation Syriza, last Sunday, May 21, at a polling station in Athens.ELIAS MARCOU (REUTERS)
Dimitris Rapidis, a journalist and former adviser to Syriza in the European Parliament, believes that Tsipras’s party has lacked direct contact with important sectors of society, such as youth and workers. And he also criticizes “the lack of strategic clarity” in the leadership: “Tsipras incorporated Pasok figures and even former members of New Democracy into the core of his team to scratch votes for Mitsotakis. And he leaned on them to set the party’s strategy. But the former members of New Democracy have no connection to the left.”
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Rapidis is skeptical about the possibility that Syriza can concentrate the useful vote of the left in the next elections. The journalist believes it is more likely that he will increase support for the Communist Party and Pasok, and that new options will emerge in a context in which he assumes an overwhelming victory for New Democracy.
Pedro Olalla, a Spanish writer and Hellenist who has lived in Athens for 30 years, attributes the collapse to the “discredit” that Tsipras has suffered since 2015, when his government accepted the cuts imposed by the European institutions in exchange for rescuing the country and avoiding the suspension of payments and exit from the euro zone. So, this writer assures, a part of his electorate voted for him to carry out “a policy of change and not of continuity.” Olalla hopes that those voters will “hold their noses” in the next elections and vote for Syriza.
The writer also expresses his surprise at the fact that, after 15 years of crisis, Greek society has not been able to organize itself so that this time a new left formation enters Parliament.” A member of Syriza, close to Tsipras , analyzed the leakage of votes, on condition of anonymity: “It is too early [para saberlo con certeza], but some went to Pasok, others to New Democracy… Perhaps 100,000 have gone over to the communists”. His conclusion: “It seems clear that there has been more of a movement of society to the right than a flight to our left.”
Among Syriza supporters there are those who complain that the Socialists celebrated the result “with more enthusiasm than New Democracy”. The aforementioned Syriza official stated bitterly: “They celebrated that they were going up 3% while Mitsotakis reached 40%.” The same source acknowledges that Syriza did not know how to convey a message of unity among the progressive parties. “And perhaps the voters saw a sign of weakness, where we wanted to convey the advisability of reaching agreements,” he adds.
Tsipras: “I’m not going to leave, not even now”
Tsipras tried on Monday to maintain the morale of his people with a statement. “I have learned to take responsibility in difficult times and not to give up the fight. I’m here. I’m not going to leave, not even now, in this trance. Yesterday was election day. Today is the first day of the battle for the next ones. Yesterday, New Democracy won, but at the same time, the strategy of the proportional electoral system suffered a defeat, ”he assured.
That proportional system was promoted by Tsipras himself. And that was, indirectly, the only self-criticism that the leftist leader acknowledged. The leadership of his party held a meeting in the morning that lasted until mid-afternoon. A source who attended the meeting, and prefers to remain anonymous, reported that no one there questioned Tsipras’s leadership. He attributed the cause of the debacle to two reasons: “On the one hand, people now want stability, after so many crises. And Mitsotakis has been able to convey that message, with the idea that it will be a strong government, capable of undertaking reforms. People preferred that stability, even if they have to suffer the harshness of their policies. And, on the other hand, “In Greece what has happened in other parts of Europe has happened: there is a conservative turn in society.”
Panagiotis Galanopoulos, 86, and Nikolaos Kokkinos, 91, commented on the results on Monday on a central terrace in Athens, with copies of several conservative-leaning newspapers, like most of the media in the country. Panagiotis was not surprised that the general strike on March 8, the largest in recent years, after the train accident, was not reflected in the polls: “The strike is a photo of the center of Athens, but the country It is not only Athens, it is also the other regions and the islands”.
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