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| Tired voters weigh up options as Greeks go once more unto the polling stations | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Like all politicians, Greek politicians love a stage. And this week, in the run-up to Sunday’s election, the scene was set with scaffolding, billboards and loudspeakers being erected at seemingly record speed in the squares of central Athens. | Like all politicians, Greek politicians love a stage. And this week, in the run-up to Sunday’s election, the scene was set with scaffolding, billboards and loudspeakers being erected at seemingly record speed in the squares of central Athens. |
| On Thursday night, it was Vangelis Meimarakis, the veteran conservative recently catapulted to the helm of the New Democracy party, addressing the crowds in Omonia Square. “Let’s take Greece forward,” he exhorted supporters, many sullen, glum-faced and wide-eyed as they went through the motions of roaring approval, waving flags and honking horns. “The lies are over. The Syriza experiment is over.” | |
| Up the road, in the cavernous tent serving as Syriza’s central campaign booth – adorned with posters of the leftist leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras – the mood was not much better: where hundreds may once have thronged, it was now only dozens of mostly young party members glowering behind sunglasses. | Up the road, in the cavernous tent serving as Syriza’s central campaign booth – adorned with posters of the leftist leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras – the mood was not much better: where hundreds may once have thronged, it was now only dozens of mostly young party members glowering behind sunglasses. |
| Related: Eurozone's enforcer ready to keep Greece's new leader in line | Related: Eurozone's enforcer ready to keep Greece's new leader in line |
| Nationwide, politicians have been trying to rally voters but in this, their third election in less than nine months – two parliamentary and one referendum – Greeks are decidedly underwhelmed. Instead, voter fatigue is the predominant force, the unspoken backdrop to a ballot that many are quick to say they never wanted. | |
| “This will be remembered as the silent election,” says Aliki Mouriki, a sociologist at the National Research Centre. “If people gather, they do so with a grim look on their face, partly because they are so exhausted, partly because they are crisis-fatigued, partly because at this stage they also feel so betrayed.” | |
| Yet, despite the ennui, few elections will be as decisive. In the great arc of crisis that has hit Greeks since the eruption of their country’s debt drama, Sunday’s poll is a potential turning point, a fork in the road that could put Europe’s most volatile state back on the path to normality. With the race too close to call – polls have Syriza and New Democracy neck and neck – concerns that Greece could once again be plunged into political uncertainty are on the rise. In capitals across the continent, governments are watching nervously. | Yet, despite the ennui, few elections will be as decisive. In the great arc of crisis that has hit Greeks since the eruption of their country’s debt drama, Sunday’s poll is a potential turning point, a fork in the road that could put Europe’s most volatile state back on the path to normality. With the race too close to call – polls have Syriza and New Democracy neck and neck – concerns that Greece could once again be plunged into political uncertainty are on the rise. In capitals across the continent, governments are watching nervously. |
| “It is not so much about who wins. It’s more the fact that this is our last chance,” says Haris Makryniotis, the managing director of Endeavour, an international non-profit organisation created to promote entrepreneurship. “Our last chance as a country and an economy to not go further south.” | |
| Related: Alexis Tsipras and rivals trade barbs in televised election debate | Related: Alexis Tsipras and rivals trade barbs in televised election debate |
| Even now, three bailouts later, normality is the one thing that eludes Greece. Seven months of governance by the anti-austerity radical left Syriza – though psychologically uplifting for a large segment of the population – was a rollercoaster of bustups and blustering that left Athens’ relations with its EU partners close to rock bottom. | Even now, three bailouts later, normality is the one thing that eludes Greece. Seven months of governance by the anti-austerity radical left Syriza – though psychologically uplifting for a large segment of the population – was a rollercoaster of bustups and blustering that left Athens’ relations with its EU partners close to rock bottom. |
| Default, like ejection from the eurozone, the currency bloc to which Greeks have attached such importance, was only narrowly avoided when an €86bn (£63bn)EU-backed rescue programme was eventually agreed in July with a series of punishing conditions. The acrimony that underpinned talks – climaxing with Tsipras’s decision to hold a referendum on the excoriating terms attached to further bailout loans – aggravated an economy already hit by depression-era levels of poverty and unemployment. The imposition of capital controls, days after the referendum’s announcement, sounded the death knell for local business and trade abroad. | |
| Whoever emerges as Sunday’s winner – and EU officials have signalled they would prefer the pro-business New Democracy – inherits a poisoned chalice. The new government will not only have to navigate Greece’s worst crisis in modern times but a nation whose emotions are prone to abrupt change. “It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” said Makryniotis. “We will undoubtedly come to the precipice again. I don’t think for a moment that, at 41, Tsipras really wants the job. The reforms he will have to implement are expedient but very tough. Every prime minister who has tried to do it has disappeared, literally, from the political scene.” | Whoever emerges as Sunday’s winner – and EU officials have signalled they would prefer the pro-business New Democracy – inherits a poisoned chalice. The new government will not only have to navigate Greece’s worst crisis in modern times but a nation whose emotions are prone to abrupt change. “It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” said Makryniotis. “We will undoubtedly come to the precipice again. I don’t think for a moment that, at 41, Tsipras really wants the job. The reforms he will have to implement are expedient but very tough. Every prime minister who has tried to do it has disappeared, literally, from the political scene.” |
| Related: Greek elections: Alexis Tsipras makes a calculated gamble | Related: Greek elections: Alexis Tsipras makes a calculated gamble |
| For Greeks, the crisis has come in waves – waves of loss, anger and despair. But from the rage that replaced shock with the outbreak of the financial crisis in October 2009, there is now an overriding sense of disgust and defeat at the corrupt political elite blamed for economic collapse and in the absence of hope that life is going to get better any time soon. Both sentiments have been inflamed by the country’s frontline role in Europe’s refugee and migrant emergency. | |
| “There is a huge feeling of indignation that all they tell us is lies, lies, lies,” sighed Stefanos Pantourakis, who runs a small neighbourhood store selling electrical supplies. “People voted no in the referendum but what did they get? In the end, they got a yes with more taxes, more cuts, because politicians in this country are worthless,” he harrumphed, in a refrain commonly heard on the street. “All they do is execute the orders of foreigners who supposedly have saved us from the rocks.” | |
| For the first time since the debt drama exploded, the fight over austerity has taken a back seat. Both Tsipras and Meimarakis are in concord that Athens must enforce the tough changes and budget cuts it has committed to in exchange for further funds to keep bankruptcy at bay. But while Tsipras no longer resembles the firebrand who stormed to power on an anti-austerity platform in January, he has steadfastly rebuffed his challenger’s overtures of forming a grand coalition. “Meimarakis on a personal level is sympathetic,” he said. “We could go for a coffee or raki, but our political differences are immense.” | |
| The Independent Greeks party – the junior partner in the outgoing coalition with whom Tsipras says he would again collaborate – may not cross the 3% threshold required to enter parliament, according to polls. But with creditors insisting that loans are contingent on further reforms, and Athens forced to enact the vast majority of measures by November, time is of the essence. The reforms, not least the promised overhaul of the country’s pension system, are so inflammatory that a stable government, now more than ever, is also critical. | The Independent Greeks party – the junior partner in the outgoing coalition with whom Tsipras says he would again collaborate – may not cross the 3% threshold required to enter parliament, according to polls. But with creditors insisting that loans are contingent on further reforms, and Athens forced to enact the vast majority of measures by November, time is of the essence. The reforms, not least the promised overhaul of the country’s pension system, are so inflammatory that a stable government, now more than ever, is also critical. |
| Related: Greek election 2015: Golden Dawn exploits atmosphere of austerity-driven despair | Related: Greek election 2015: Golden Dawn exploits atmosphere of austerity-driven despair |
| On the extreme left and extreme right, parties intent on carrying the anti-austerity flame are already girding for battle. The neofascist Golden Dawn has persistently polled between 5.5% and 7%, coming in as the country’s third biggest political force. | |
| Popular Unity, the pro-drachma party set up by Syriza rebels, is poised to gain as much as 5%. Addressing his own supporters in a central Athens square this week, the Marxist former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who heads the party, accused Tsipras of having “surrendered and humiliated us.”. “Some people have turned the euro into a religion. But it has become a dictatorship,” he told the crowd before dancing and singing to Italian revolutionary songs on the stage. | |
| Against the backdrop of a potentially explosive winter, the lack of policy discussion that has characterised the ”express” election has raised alarm. Few believe that even with the drama of a third bailout behind it, the risk of Grexit – Greece’s enforced exit from the euro – has been fully quashed. Senior EU mandarins, including the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, have warned repeatedly that Brussels will react differently if agreements and timetables are not respected. | |
| “Grexit is still on the table which is why the next few months are going to be very important in terms of the signal the Greek government gives to European partners and internal economic powers,” said the former EU commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou. “Greece not only needs a strong prime minister but a government with a dream team of the very best from across the parties, society, academia and business. That, now, is the only way to deal with this crisis. ” | |
| With polls also showing no party winning an outright majority, much will depend on Tsipras and Meimarakis winning more than about 10% of undecided voters. In an unprecedented step, Syriza and New Democracy are both campaigning door to door in the run-up to Sunday’s election. Voters are not giving much away – more often than not telling pollsters, and anyone who will listen, they will make their decision at the ballot box on the day. |