It is hard to imagine two election campaigns more different than that leading up to SYRIZA's triumph in Greece's January 25 elections and country's September 20 vote.
In January, SYRIZA's winning slogan was “Hope is on the Way” — hope for a government that would end the six years of suffering inflicted on Greece by austerity measures in the first two memoranda of the “Troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund).
Now, SYRIZA's campaign slogan is “A Stronghold to Defend”. Hope for liberation from austerity has been replaced by debate over whether it is better to have SYRIZA or the conservative New Democracy (ND) at the helm when the third memorandum forced on Greece by the European establishment starts to bite.
That package, accepted by the SYRIZA-led government on July 13, will privatise €50 billion in public assets, slash pensions and hand veto power over Greek legislation to the Troika plus the European Stability Mechanism (the “Quadroika”).
The January election campaign was charged with the roaring enthusiasm of SYRIZA's members and supporters: this campaign has been, in the words of Wall Street Journal reporter Aristidis Hatzis, “surprisingly, eerily calm”.
As September 20 approaches, opinion polls have SYRIZA and ND neck-and-neck. On September 17, the Evoice poll had SYRIZA winning narrowly and a Pulse RC poll had the two parties tied on 30.7%. Two other polls had ND winning.
If the September 17 poll most favourable to SYRIZA was confirmed on September 20, the party would win 137 seats in the 300-seat parliament, down from the 149 it won on January 25. It would be forced to look for coalition partners.
Those figures include the 50 seats awarded to the winning party under the Greek electoral system, which also awards that party first shot at forming a governing coalition.
Given the closeness of the contest, the final result will be decided by the still undecided voters - between 5.5% and 16.5% of the electorate according to different polls.
Polls
At the time of writing on September 17, the bookmakers have the probability of a SYRIZA win at about 75%. Their judgement seems to be that enough disillusioned SYRIZA voters will be frightened back into the fold by the prospect of an ND victory.
Petros Markopoulos, a former member of SYRIZA youth's management committee who resigned after SYRIZA Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to the Troika bailout conditions, summed up these sentiments to the Financial Times: “If SYRIZA loses this election, then we will see a total collapse of the left ...
“Sure, SYRIZA has not achieved the revolution we hoped. But we have to do all we can to ensure they win now. Then the debate on our future can restart.”
A feature of all polls is that, despite losing many members since July 13, SYRIZA has maintained the support of 85%-90% of those who voted for it on January 25.
There are two key reasons for this. Firstly, the government's six-month-long struggle to win an acceptable deal is seen by many as the best that could have been achieved in the face of Troika blackmail.
Secondly, the SYRIZA government is regarded as the first honest government in contemporary Greek history. Despite its defeat in the battle with “Brussels”, SYRIZA is still largely viewed as a break with traditionally corrupt Greek politics as represented by ND and the social-democratic Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).
SYRIZA's election material hammers this point, arguing: “Who do we want to negotiate the debt reduction soon after the election? Those that for years now declare it to be sustainable or those that imposed the need for its reduction on the creditors?
“Who do we want to negotiate labour rights, workers’ protections and liberties and collective contracts? SYRIZA or those that imposed a nightmare for workers?”
Nonetheless, the polls generally show the lead that SYRIZA established over ND - 8.5% at the January election, reaching a high of around 15% in late June - has basically disappeared.
Tsipras's own popularity rating - at 70% in March - has fallen to about 30%.
Media coverage from Greece on the mood among SYRIZA's most active supporters, especially youth, stresses feelings of betrayal and tiredness.
According to party officials cited in the FT, “in the aftermath [of the July 13 acceptance of the memorandum] at least one third of SYRIZA's membership defected to other parties, including those to its left, with others leaving political campaigning altogether.”
The lost SYRIZA vote
A small slice of the lost SYRIZA vote has gone to Popular Unity (PU), a split from SYRIZA of outright opponents of the July 13 memorandum agreement, led by former energy minister and leader of SYRIZA's Left Platform Panagiotis Lafazanis. Recent polls give PU between 3% and 4%.
Such figures would mean if the PU, which accepts that Greece probably needs to leave the Eurozone, breaks the 3% threshold for parliamentary representation, it will win between 8 and 13 seats. This compares to the 25 seats previously held by MPs from SYRIZA's Left Platform.
Another small slice will go to the Greek Communist Party (KKE), whose election campaign has been focussed on “exposing” PU as “SYRIZA 2.0”. On January 25, the KKE won 5.5%. An average of recent polls gives the party 6.4%, which would raise its representation from 15 seats to 18.
The third sliver of SYRIZA's lost support will go back to PASOK. Greece's traditional social democratic party, which won just 4.7% in January, is averaging 5.9% in polls - enough to increase its representation from 13 to 16 seats.
The other left force standing on September 20, ANTARSYA, seems unlikely to beat the 0.64% it won in January, especially as it decided not to join the PU ticket.
Taken together, the expected average rise in the PU, KKE and PASOK vote more than accounts for the total expected fall in SYRIZA's support – down from 36.3% in January to an average expected result of 31.7% on September 20.
No ND surge
Over the same period, the average expected rise in the ND vote will be only 2.2%. If it succeeds in closing the gap on SYRIZA, ND's win will be due more to the fall in support for the left coalition than any surge in its own popularity.
The rise in support for ND has largely come from SYRIZA's partner in government, the right-nationalist and socially conservative Independent Greeks (ANEL). The difference between ANEL - opponents of austerity before July 13 - and ND is becoming harder to detect.
In January, ANEL won 4.8% of the vote and 13 seats. Today, the polls give it an average 3% of the vote, right on the threshold for parliamentary representation.
On the far right, the polls have neo-fascist Golden Dawn increasing its vote by 1% from 6.3% to 7.3%. However, voting intentions for Golden Dawn show the greatest variance of all parties as potential supporters often refuse to declare their voting intentions.
The volatile situation in Greece produced by the surge in refugees from Syria could see the vote for the xenophobic Golden Dawn rise. On the other hand, a last-minute shift of some of its voters to ND in a “stop SYRIZA” surge cannot be ruled out.
The Union of Centrists (EK) also looks likely to make its parliamentary debut. Established in 1992 as a middle-of-the-road “alternative” to the PASOK and ND dynasties by a late-night talk show host, EK had little chance of getting into parliament when SYRIZA was seen as the only realistic alternative to the old parties.
However, its average score over recent polls is 3.6%, indicating that its “neither-left-nor-right” message is winning support in the confusion produced by SYRIZA signing a third memorandum.
At the same time, The River, the “hipster, non-political” competitor for the middle-of-the-road vote, has been stagnating in the polls at around 5%, unlikely to surpass the 6% it won in January.
Prospects
If the polls are accurate, the likely changes on September 20 will be small when measured against the tumultuous past nine months. That is overwhelmingly because this election is taking place in the “eerily calm” interlude before impact of the third memorandum starts to be felt.
Yet the horrors will come - in a likely context of continuing recession and with a banking sector needing at least €25 billion injected to keep it solvent, and tax increases and spending cuts that can only deepen recession.
According to Ashoka Mody, former IMF mission boss in Ireland during that country's “rescue”, achieving the objectives of Greece's third memorandum “will require a miracle”.
The immediate future is also full of question marks. Now that Greece has been made to see who's boss, the powers-that-be and even neoliberal economists can agree that the country needs immediate debt relief. But how much? And on what conditions?
On this vital issue Greece's “partners” squabble amongst themselves. The IMF insists on a “bold” program of debt relief before it commits its funds, while the German-dominated Eurogroup (of Eurozone finance ministers) demands action on the memorandum's conditionalities before there is any talk of debt relief.
In the run-up to January 25, the powers of the European establishment intervened to try to prevent a SYRIZA victory. This time, with SYRIZA apparently tamed, voices that were loud and aggressive in January have largely been silent.
One exception is German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. In the lead up to September 20, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Greek society still had to face up to the question of whether it was prepared to accept “necessary economic adjustment processes”.
[Dick Nichols in Green Left Weekly's European correspondent, based in Barcelona. An extended version of this article, including analysis of the Greek election results, will be published at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.]
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