Once more, Greeks living abroad will not be able to vote in the parliamentary elections from their place of residence, including Australia.
Petros Papakalos, a lawyer and a linguist in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxemburg, hit the nail on the head about how the Greeks of the diaspora feel. During the previous election, Papakalos started a worldwide campaign which became viral. Unfortunately, his campaign is still relevant.
“Successive Greek governments never seriously bothered to ensure the exercise of this right. They usually approached the issue with the prospect of enlarging their electoral clientele, by considering to grant voting rights to second, third and fourth generation Greek immigrants in the US, Australia and elsewhere,” Papakalos said.
“Instead, they could have done the realistic minimum of giving the ability to exercise that right to those with Greek nationality who are already registered on the electoral rolls.
“I know the objections. ‘Why do you want to have a say when you no longer live in Greece?’ And this comes from people who welcome the right to vote in the grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s electoral district by people who live in Attica for decades. Perhaps they think that migration implies disenfranchisement. Ignoring that some of us continue to be taxed in Greece, and also to have assets, care for the future, and for the future of our family and friends,” Papakalos points out.
Greece is probably the only EU country that does not provide its expatriate citizens with the opportunity to vote in embassies and consulates (or even the possibility of postal voting).
In addition to the above, many of the Greek voters who are excluded from the electoral process live temporarily abroad (e.g. students), while all those who are registered in electoral rolls count as abstention, unless they travel to Greece and vote – at least 500,000, which corresponds to around 7-8 per cent of the valid ballot in the most recent elections. And that’s without counting second and third generation expatriate Greeks.
“Combined with the bonus of 50 parliamentary seats to the winning party, the exclusion of 100,000 first-time voters, and an unknown number of voters who live away from their constituency and can’t apply on time to transfer their electoral rights, the result is a significant alteration of popular will – to the extent that the phrase ‘democratically elected government’ ceases to have a meaning,” he concludes.
*Nikolaos Stampoulopoulos is founder and creative director of New Diaspora.