The big news regarding the outcome of yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Greece is not the expected reelection of New Democracy, under the leadership of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with 158 seats, as many as in the 2019 elections, in the 300 seat Parliament.
Neither is the worse than a month ago performance of Syriza under the leadership of former PM Alexis Tsipras.
Nor that less people voted this time, in the middle of Greek summer and at the height of contracted/gig economy, than on May 21st…
The huge news is the election to Parliament of three small xenophobic and socially and ideologically extreme political parties to the right of New Democracy, with a combined vote of 13%!
Traditionally, the far right in Greece has an electoral appeal in the vicinity of 10%. This time though, on its own, without including in the estimates the segments of the far right that voted for New Democracy, the extreme right has done better, much better than when the Golden Dawn, during the crisis, won 7.5% of the vote and became the third largest party in the Greek parliament.
Considering that yesterday’s elections have also reconfirmed the fracture and the big electoral defeat of the centre left in Greece, then…
We have every reason to be alert, regarding the political direction of Greece, in the near future. Especially in relation to social issues, social and civic rights, immigration and potentially foreign affairs…
Reelected PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis will have to govern Greece while keeping a close, a very close eye not to his left, but to his right. Both outside and inside his party…
As for the annihilated and fractured centre left and left in Greece… It needs time, it needs a lot of time and a few issues that are there, but are still not visible, or not of concern to the majority of the electorate (public health, education, civic rights, etc), if it is to recover…
Amongst others, the issue for the Greek centre left is that Syriza might have “collapsed” electorally, but the social democratic former governing party of Greece #PASOK is not repatriating enough votes from its former support base, which in its majority, still remained with Syriza… In other words, PASOK does not seem to be able to regain its old stature and magnitude…
In conclusion. Yesterday’s elections in Greece have moved the electoral and political pendulum of the country further to the right. The right to far right trend that already exists in other western European countries has also become electorally visible in Greece, now. The issue with the country though is that it is not located in the heart of Europe, but on its periphery…
