Senate Greek politics thread

Well, well, well. The last week of the elections campaign is starting with a bang.

First there was this article (in Greek) on a lousy news website that quotes another article from a large but notoriously unreliable newspaper. The title is "Greece probably outside the Eurozone on Thursday." Both are based on unnamed ECB officials who allegedly say that Greece will be excluded from the ECB's plan to buy government bonds because of the possibility that SYRIZA will be the next government. Both the newspaper and the news site jump from there to the conclusion that this means Grexit this week. The funniest bit of it all is that the link to the news site was thrown on social media by Adonis Georgiadis, who is currently New Democracy's spokesman in parliament. Greek Twitter is on fire right now, but mostly with laughter. I just saw someone commenting that the Antichrist is also coming to Greece on Thursday.

Then this video turned up. It's a speech given yesterday in Aspropyrgos near Athens by Makis Voridis, the current Minister of Health. Here's a little bit of background about him, until November 2011.



But there's more. LAOS withdrew from the Papademos government in February 2012, but Voridis chose to stay on (apparently he liked his ministerial position too much), and he joined New Democracy. So now he's a VERY prominent member of New Democracy, but he visibly hasn't given up on his far-right roots. Yesterday in Aspropyrgos he said:

A few footnotes:

• What "our grandfathers" did was the Greek Civil War 1946-1949
• "Homeland, Religion, Family" was the slogan of the Junta 1967-1974.

 

SYRIZA's last rally before the elections in Athens tonight



Also, with warm greetings to JoinTheSchwarz :



(Yes, he said it. SYRIZA Podemos Venceremos. I wish I were that optimistic.)

 

I hope you kick the last Junta remnants off the government. I also wish I was optimistic about the remnants if Francoism being swept away.

 

Voridis is absolutely right when he says that it's an ideological contest -- between those who are nostalgic of the super-conservative Greece of the 1950s-60s-70s when a whisper that you were a communist was enough to land you in prison (and a lot of people who weren't communists found themselves in prison that way) and those who want to live in a modern, democratic country, but also between those who are comfortable with the old political establishment and it cortege of oligarchs and those who want things that you'd expect to be obvious in Europe in 2015, like transparency, meritocracy, safeguards to protect fairness in business and employment practices, etc. The thing is that these categories don't necessarily overlap (e.g. there are super-conservative people who would like economic justice). That's why the electorate is all over the place and, because ND has nothing to offer in terms of economic/social justice, the only thing they can appeal to is base conservatism. Tsipras had a good soundbite about that in his speech tonight, something along the lines of Samaras bringing mothballed, post-civil war anticommunism out of the cupboard.

(Just to clarify my position, I don't believe for a second that SYRIZA can turn us into a modern, democratic country with functioning institutions, and I don't think there are many people who believe it. I also have no reason to believe, for now, that SYRIZA are corrupt, but that could change of course once they come to power. But given their record in parliament over the past twenty years, there is every reason to believe that they will defend civil liberties, human rights etc and that's something we badly need right now.)

To be completely honest, I don't know, first and foremost because Athens and the rest of the country are two different worlds, and the environment I live in is not so representative of society at large -- my family are very cosmopolitan, I work for a human rights group, most of my friends are lefties or anarchists, etc. The provinces, in particular rural areas, can be very, very conservative (to give you an idea, we had honour crimes in Greece until the mid-1980s). And even in Athens, even in "bourgeois" professions, you'll find very conservative people. For instance, the chairman of the Athens Bar Association is a "Homeland-Religion-Family" guy, and he was elected by the lawyers, yes? So it's difficult to tell, but the good news is that we'll find out on Sunday

 

I am waiting for Samaras's final campaign speech to begin. It was supposed to start nearly one hour ago. Here's a possible explanation as to why he's late:

 

The stadium where Samaras was speaking tonight in Athens, 40 minutes into the speech:



vs Tsipras speaking on a square in Heraklion, Crete at the same hour:



I want to say "game over", but I'll wait until Sunday.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed!

 

rflmao

 

*rflmaoapopolis

 

Here's another one. This morning Sofia Voultepsi, the government spokesperson until the elections were announced (the gov spokesperson changes by law in the electoral period) went on an interview on a pro-government TV station. Here's the dialogue with the journalist:

Voultepsi: Because people believe that default is what we're living through now. But default means a real default, during which the imports of fuel, raw materials and medicines will stop immediately.

Journalist: You're almost telling us that we won't have toilet paper.

Voultepsi: No, there's no toilet paper in Argentina and Venezuela. (The journalist protests). In any case I advise you to buy some.

But that's the thing, right? He actually believes this crap. He doesn't think it's loltastic at all. And what's more outrageous is that he's the great-grandson of Emmanouil Benakis, who donated his private home and private collection to make the Benaki museum, one of the most beautiful museums we have in Athens. He doesn't even have the excuse of being ignorant about cultural heritage. #oust (that's a hashtag from Greek Twitter but I'm sure you can guess what it means )

 

Tsipras in his polling station this morning. I've never seen anything like this.

 

The New Democracy central election kiosk on Syntagma square half an hour before polls close and early results are announced:



...versus the SYRIZA election kiosk 500m up the road, 1 hour and 15 minutes before early results are announced:

 

First exit poll results (no official results expected before 21:30 EET)

SYRIZA 35.5 – 39.5% (146-158 MPs)
ND 23 - 27% (65-75 MPs)
Golden Dawn (Nazis) 6.4 - 8% (17-22 MPs)
To Potami (centrist, pro-austerity) 6.4 - 8% (17-22 MPs)
KKE (communist) 4.7 - 5.7% (13-16 MPs)
PASOK 4.2 - 5.2% (12-15 MPs)
Independent Greeks (populist nationalist right) 3.5 - 4.5 (10-13 MPs)
Kinima (Papandreou PASOK offshot) 2.2 - 3.2% (0-8 MPs)

The SYRIZA crowd in downtown Athens are hysterical (see pic below) BUT:

• Parliamentary majority is 151 seats and there's no guarantee they're getting it as of right now (description of the electoral law here)
• There's a very serious possibility that the Nazis are the third largest political force in parliament.

 

Might be an interesting day on the European markets tomorrow..

 

Official results with approx 14% of votes counted are far less optimistic for SYRIZA than the exit poll:

SYRIZA: 34.91%
ND: 29.48%
Golden Dawn: 6.25%
Potami: 5.53%
PASOK: 5.30%
KKE: 5.29%
Independent Greeks: 4.59%
Kinima: 2.55%
Other parties not entering parliament: 6.1%

In this scenario SYRIZA falls short of a straight majority of seats in parliament. Also, the Nazis are likely to be the third largest party in the Greek parliament. Not good.

 

PASOK would agree to be a partner with the devil himself! But I doubt SYRIZA would want a coalition with PASOK. Results are still coming in of course, but it looks like SYRIZA will get only 150 seats (1 short of majority) and my educated guess is that it means repeat elections.

 

Greek politics are bizarre.

 

says a briton

 

A good day for SYRIZA, regardless if they pull the outright majority or not.

Also, SuperWatto I'm not yelling their name it's actually all caps.

 

Most definitely.

Actually, it should be SyRizA but even in Greek we write it all caps by now out of habit