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yiannis mavris
GR E ECE’S AU S TERITY E L E CTI O N
A
cross most of Europe and North America, the two-party system of alternating centre-left and centre-right governments has so far largely managed to absorb the political fall-out from the 2008 financial crisis. Despite high unemployment, savage public-spending cuts and stagnant economies, the process of ousting the incumbents—as in Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France—or rallying to support a lesser against a greater evil, has operated as a sufficient safety valve for citizens’ discontents, even though the policies of the mainstream parties are now almost indistinguishable. To date it is only in Greece, where the economic disaster has been most far-reaching, that the two-party system has collapsed altogether, leading to new mass-political alignments. Here, the centre-left pasok and centre-right New Democracy had dominated the political scene since the ‘regime change’ to representative democracy— the Metapolitefsi—following the 1967–74 military dictatorship. But in the elections of 6 May 2012, after two years in which both pasok and nd had committed themselves to the austerity measures of the eu–ecb– imf Memoranda of Agreement, no party managed to score more than 19 per cent of the vote. In this fragmented landscape, attempts to piece together a working majority fell short. A further election was therefore called, six weeks later. At the second time of asking, on 17 June 2012, Greek voters finally elected sufficient deputies to create a government acceptable to Berlin, Frankfurt and Brussels, under the nd’s Antonis Samaras. But the ‘grand coalition’ of nd, pasok and dimar received only 2.9m votes altogether, barely 29 per cent of the total electorate, with its support coming mainly from the elderly, pensioners and housewives, rural areas and the rich.1 new left review 76 july aug 2012
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The June 17 poll appears to announce a new political configuration: a polarization between forces supporting the Troika’s Memoranda and those opposing them. The latter have coalesced around syriza, whose emergence as a major electoral force constitutes a further significant novelty: for the first time since the 1950s, the left is at the heart of political developments, rather than being consigned to the margins. What follows will analyse the disintegration of the two-party system in May, the June results and the rise of syriza, before providing a social, demographic and geographical breakdown of the voting patterns, the better to understand the respective support bases of the new government and its opponents.
May’s fragmentation Since the fall of the military junta in 1974, the repeated alternation of pasok and nd has been the bedrock of the liberal-democratic system. The combined support levels for the two ‘parties of government’ generally stood at 80–85 per cent, comparable only to the pattern in Anglo-Saxon countries. But amid the deepening national debt crisis, the two-party system has become profoundly discredited. Since May 2010, both nd and pasok have committed themselves to the Troika’s policy of drastic cuts in wages and social provision, as a condition for ever more expensive loans to cover the interest due to Greek, French and German banks for their past lending to nd and pasok governments—a strategy that has plunged the country into its own Great Depression, with no end in sight. Public opposition to the terms of the loan agreements has been running high—it already stood at 65–70 per cent as early as May 2010. By 2011, politicians who had summarily ratified the ‘emergency’ legislation imposed by the first Memorandum could no longer appear in public without being jeered or physically threatened. The need for legitimation lay behind pasok leader George Papandreou’s suggestion of a referendum on the Memorandum in late October 2011, leading to his ouster, orchestrated by Merkel and Sarkozy, and the installation of a pasok– nd coalition government supported by the far-right laos, under former [dimar (Democratic Left): right-wing rump of what was once Greek Eurocommunism; split from the syriza coalition in 2010. Led by Fotis Kouvelis, whose part in bringing about the current Greek government has been a replay of the role of Stephanos Stephanopoulos, the renegade Centre Union politician whose service to the King in helping to abort Greek democracy is still remembered as ‘the Apostasy’. nlr] 1
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central banker Lucas Papademos, which signed on to a second, still-more savage Memorandum of Agreement with the Troika in March 2012. When fresh elections were finally held on 6 May 2012, the punishment dished out to the two main parties was unprecedented. In the space of just thirty months following the election of October 2009, they lost a total of 3.3 million votes—pasok 2.2 million and nd 1.1 million—a figure that represents 47 per cent of those who voted in 2009. pasok slumped to just 13.2 per cent, having secured 43.9 per cent in 2009, while nd scored only 18.9 per cent, down from 33.4 per cent in 2009. The left coalition of syriza, meanwhile, more than trebled its vote share to 16.8 per cent, while the centre-right Independent Greeks, an anti-Memorandum split from nd, scored 10.6 per cent; the Communist Party (kke) polled 8.5 per cent, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn 7 and dimar (Democratic Left) a mere 6.1 per cent. A historic high of 19 per cent was accounted for by a mosaic of small, newly formed parties that, thanks to a constitutional 3-per-cent barrier, remained outside parliament. The official turnout was 65 per cent, a fall of 6 per cent compared to 2009. At 32 per cent, the combined total for the two ‘parties of government’ was less than half their aggregate support in the previous elections. pasok’s vote share was even lower than the 13.4 per cent it secured on its first appearance in 1974. Similarly, nd’s vote share was the lowest ever received by the main party of the right since the interwar period. pasok was punished more severely, held to account for Greece’s recourse to the imf and the signing of the first Memorandum. But the splits within the Greek right caused by the debt crisis now became evident: the conservative bloc emerged from the May elections geographically, socially, politically and ideologically fragmented, its three main currents—the ‘popular right’, the ‘far right’ and the ‘neoliberal right’—scattered across seven different party formations. The radical overturning of the previous balance of forces in May also demonstrated the bankruptcy of the electoral system. The present ‘qualified proportional representation’ awards the party with the highest vote tally a preposterous bonus of 50 parliamentary seats (previously 40, till the nd government of Kostas Karamanlis increased it in 2008). The logic of this was to ensure a working majority for the leading party, effectively allowing it to enter office by winning 38–39 per cent of the vote. But in the fragmented electoral landscape of May 2012, the distortions of
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this system became even more apparent: with 19 per cent of the vote, nd won 58 seats in proportional terms, but as the leading party doubled its number of mps to 108, out of a total of 300. syriza, with 17 per cent, had only 50 mps. Moreover, the 3-per-cent threshold meant that the one-fifth of the electorate who voted for small parties were left without political representation. This too helped to lower the percentage required for the party finishing first to form a majority, which now stood at 32.7 per cent. However, nd’s poor performance and the electoral collapse of pasok meant that the two parties’ combined score, at 32.1 per cent, was still below this limit—hence their inability to form a government.
June’s polarization The May electoral success of syriza generated a burst of enthusiasm for the party, bringing in turn a rapid surge in voter support. The upward trend continued until the end of May, with public support reaching a level of 32 per cent—an increase of more than 10 percentage points in the space of a month—before declining sharply over the following fortnight, when syriza lost an estimated 4–5 per cent, to obtain just under 27 per cent on June 17. Why was its electoral momentum checked, and then partially reversed? syriza’s gains had come primarily at the expense of the Communist Party (kke) and smaller left-wing groupings, but also to some extent from a segment of conservative anti-Memorandum voters; the announcement of syriza’s programme on 1 June likely deterred the latter constituency, especially the points on immigration and policing— calling for guarantees of human rights in immigrant-detention centres, the facilitation of immigrant family reunion, demilitarization of the coast guard, and prohibitions on the use of masks or firearms against demonstrators. As we shall see, abstentions, especially among impoverished younger voters and domestic migrants living far from the constituencies where they were registered, also had a disproportionate effect on syriza’s vote, perhaps accounting for as much as 1.5 per cent of nd’s victory margin. But the main reason for the last-minute drop in support for syriza should be sought in the massive campaign to intimidate the population that was launched from both within and outside the country. The rise of an attractive left-wing party, intransigently opposed to the debt-and-austerity measures demanded by Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin, alarmed ruling elites in Greece and beyond, prompting the formation of a ‘holy alliance’
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against syriza. Domestic and foreign media outlets propagated the idea that a victory for syriza would bring about Greece’s exit or expulsion from the Eurozone, as well as confiscation or even loss of bank deposits; the country would be unable to pay salaries and pensions, and as funds dried up there would be shortages of fuel for transportation and heating. In the run-up to polling day, there were sudden power cuts and artificial shortages of basic medicines for cancer and heart patients, which were not distributed to pharmacies. In a staggering display of interference in the electoral politics of a sovereign country, European officials, international organizations, foreign banks and financial institutions generated a constant flow of statements, ‘analyses’, rumours and threats. The unabashed intervention in favour of the ‘pro-Europe parties’ undoubtedly influenced the result on 17 June, perhaps by as much as 4 per cent. The ‘euro vs drachma’ dilemma had an intimidating effect on a sizeable proportion of the electorate, dissuading voters from supporting syriza while prompting others to abstain or vote tactically for nd, which became the nucleus of the forces bidding to counter the ‘red threat’. Voting patterns in June were thus very different from those of May. The fragmentation recorded in the earlier poll gave way to a more concentrated and polarized political scene, with nd and syriza as its leading players. New Democracy scored 29.7 per cent, Syriza 26.9, with pasok in third place on 12.3 per cent; Democratic Left’s vote stayed steady at 6.3 per cent, as did that of Golden Dawn, at 6.9 per cent. The gains of the two main political forces took place chiefly at the expense of the smaller parties: the kke’s vote dropped from 8.5 per cent to 4.5, for example, and 27 per cent of those who voted for it in May switched to syriza (see Table 1, overleaf, for a full breakdown of shifting voter allegiances between October 2009 and June 2012). The share of the vote going to parties that remained outside parliament dropped from 19 per cent in May to just 6 per cent, the difference mainly distributed between nd and syriza. Turnout fell further relative to May, to 62.5 per cent. The results yielded nd 79 seats—boosted to 129 thanks to the fifty-seat bonus—and syriza 71; with pasok’s 33 mps and Democratic Left’s 17, Samaras was able to build a working majority of 179. New Democracy’s 19 per cent share of the May vote was, as noted above, the lowest received by the main party of the Greek right since 1926. For a few days, Samaras’s position as party leader was even in question— though the prospect of a break-up of nd soon proved too alarming to
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Table 1. Greek elections 2012: voting behaviour relative to previous election
nd
pasok
dimar
syriza
kke
Ind. Greeks
Golden Dawn
18.9
13.2
6.1
16.8
8.5
10.6
7
May Overall share of vote (%) Distribution of party vote from 2009 election (%) nd
51
1
2
7
2
16
10
pasok
6
36
10
16
5
6
4
kke
1
1
3
15
70
1
2
syriza
1
2
11
70
3
3
1
laos
9
0
2
8
2
23
18
Other
1
2
6
9
3
9
15
First-time voters
10
7
7
30
4
10
22
Abstention
14
5
7
19
6
15
7
Blank/spoiled ballot
12
4
5
21
6
14
4
29.7
12.3
6.3
26.9
4.5
7.5
6.9
nd
94
0
0
3
0
1
1
syriza
5
2
4
85
2
1
1
pasok
9
79
3
8
0
1
1
Independent Greeks
16
2
1
21
0
53
5
kke
2
1
3
27
60
3
2
Golden Dawn
14
1
0
10
0
3
70
dimar
12
11
58
17
0
1
0
Other
29
6
5
18
0
4
3
Abstention
35
13
8
23
1
8
5
Blank/spoiled ballot
34
11
13
21
0
3
9
June Overall share of vote (%) Distribution of party vote from May election (%)
Source: Public Issue, pre-election Political Barometer.
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contemplate for the Greek elite and its backers. But although it managed an eleven-point improvement in the June elections, this was still the party’s second-worst electoral performance in 30 years. In addition to its core support, it attracted mainly conservative voters, who in the May contest had opted for smaller parties of the neoliberal right— Democratic Alliance, ReCreate Greece—the far-right laos, and to a lesser extent Independent Greeks. But nd was unable to check support for Golden Dawn, which in the June election consolidated its presence on the political scene. Moreover, the vote for nd was essentially negative. According to an opinion survey conducted on 11–14 June, 18 per cent of nd voters cast their ballot ‘in order for Greece to remain in the euro area’, 8 per cent ‘in order for there to be stability’, while one in ten were former pasok and Democratic Left voters who switched to nd for tactical reasons, ‘to prevent syriza from winning’.2 The vote for syriza, by contrast, may be described as particularly positive. According to the same survey, 38 per cent of syriza voters said they supported the party because ‘it expresses the demand for change’, and 14 per cent because it represents ‘hope for better days’.3 The increase in syriza’s support between May and June—from 16.8 per cent to 26.9 per cent—indicates the phenomenally compressed time-frame within which the country’s political landscape has been evolving: the momentum the coalition developed between the two contests would normally take several years to acquire. The fact that syriza did not win the June vote should not obscure the remarkable political transformation that has taken place: in less than three years, the coalition has increased its support fivefold, from 316,000 in October 2009 to 1.7 million in June 2012, and has now emerged as the country’s principal oppositional force. The mounting discredit of the two major parties of the post-dictatorship period has also amplified a trend towards abstention. Official turnouts have steadily declined over the past decade—though figures should be treated with caution, given that electoral rolls have not been properly updated to take account of non-resident deaths for decades, which artificially inflates the total, perhaps by as much as 10 per cent. Nonetheless, the dynamic is clear: since 2004, an additional 1.4 million Greek voters—17.9 per cent of the electorate in that year—have chosen to turn Nationwide telephone survey of 1,203 individuals, conducted on 11–14 June 2012; see Public Issue, Political Barometer 110. 3 Political Barometer 110. 2
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their backs on the electoral process. The economic crisis has accelerated this tendency: in May 2012, 570,000 fewer voters cast ballots than in 2009—a drop of 8 per cent—while in June the rate of abstention relative to May rose by a further 4 per cent, representing 260,000 fewer voters. In total, in the two years since the Memoranda began to be implemented, the number of voters has dropped by 800,000, giving an overall abstention rate of perhaps 28 per cent, corresponding to 2.4 million citizens. The higher abstention rate in June worked against syriza, given that a large portion of the electorate preferred to ‘exit’ than cast a protest vote. Moreover, the additional abstention relative to May came in social categories in which, as we will see in more detail below, the coalition predominates, such as young and ‘out-of-constituency’ voters—that is, those who vote not in their place of residence but in their place of origin. The latter category accounts for some 14–15 per cent of the electorate, and corresponds to the most recent internal migrants, drawn to the cities from the provinces. These voters have been hit particularly hard by unemployment, reduced incomes and fuel-price increases, making the costs of travelling back to vote prohibitive. The abstention rate may also have been higher in June, especially among young voters, due to seasonal factors: the exam period, summer employment in tourism in island regions, travel abroad and so on.4 Increased migration on account of unemployment will inevitably strengthen this trend in years to come.
Social patterns How should the parties’ respective electoral bases be characterized, socially, demographically and geographically? On the whole, syriza brings together the most dynamic segments of the electorate: its support is concentrated in large urban centres and among salaried employees, the economically active population and younger age groups. By contrast, the supporters of New Democracy—and therefore of the government— tend to be older, from rural or semi-urban areas, and are drawn chiefly from among the economically inactive population. In June, with just under 30 per cent overall, nd won the votes of 42 per cent of pensioners and 37 per cent of housewives; however, its share of voters among salaried employees was very low: 19 per cent in the private and 21 per cent in the public sectors (see Table 2 opposite, panel A). nd won the most Nationwide telephone survey of 1,004 individuals on the reasons for abstention, conducted by Public Issue, 5–10 July 2012. 4
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Table 2. Greek elections, June 2012: voter demographics, % shares of vote nd
pasok
dimar
syriza
kke
Ind. Greeks
Golden Dawn
29.7
12.3
6.3
26.9
4.5
7.5
6.9
Employers/selfemployed
28
10
5
27
4
8
11
Public-sector employees
21
10
10
33
5
8
6
Private-sector employees
19
7
7
34
5
8
11
Unemployed
17
5
6
37
4
11
12
Pensioners
42
20
5
18
4
5
3
Housewives
37
11
6
23
5
9
3
Students
12
8
11
39
4
8
7
Overall share of vote A. Occupation
B. Economic Activity Active
24
9
7
31
5
8
10
Inactive
39
17
6
20
4
6
3
Facing financial difficulty
26
10
6
31
5
9
8
Making ends meet
38
17
8
18
3
5
4
Male
30
14
5
25
5
6
10
Female
30
11
8
29
4
9
4
18–24
11
5
10
37
5
7
13
25–34
16
6
5
33
4
10
16
35–44
21
7
7
32
4
10
1
45–54
24
9
7
34
5
8
7
55–64
33
14
6
27
5
7
4
65+
48
21
5
13
4
5
2
28
11
7
30
4
8
6
27
9
8
31
5
6
7
Semi-urban
30
13
6
23
5
8
8
Rural
36
16
5
22
4
7
7
C. Assessment of income
D. Gender
E. Age
F. Geographical area Urban Athens Metropolitan area
Source: Public Issue, pre-election Political Barometer.
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votes among employers and the self-employed, where it has traditionally prevailed; however, its support in this category, at 28 per cent, was much weaker than the 46–49 per cent it had enjoyed in 2004–07, or for that matter its 33 per cent in 2009, when it lost to pasok. Perhaps most striking is the fact that between the two elections of 2012, nd’s support increased most—from 26 per cent to 38 per cent—within the category of the ‘financially secure’: those who describe themselves as able to ‘live comfortably or manage on their income’ (Table 2C). These social strata have not been hit by the economic crisis, and in some cases have even benefited from it.
pasok’s remaining voter base exhibits similar social characteristics to that of nd. Though its support stands at 13 per cent across the board, this jumps to 17 per cent among the ‘financially secure’ and 20 per cent among pensioners. By contrast, pasok’s support among salaried employees, which stood at 44 per cent in 2009, tumbled to just 7–10 per cent in June 2012. syriza, meanwhile, performed best among salaried employees, the economically active population, students and the unemployed: 34 per cent of private-sector and 33 per cent of public-sector employees voted for the coalition, along with 37 per cent of the unemployed and 39 per cent of students. In class terms its support is markedly strong among the lower middle class (32 per cent) and, especially, déclassé strata—that is, those whose class status has been downgraded by the economic crisis—where syriza pulled in 42 per cent of the vote. With the collapse of pasok, the social layers it had represented during the Metapolitefsi have to a large extent been split between syriza and dimar, in a ratio of 3 : 1. However, there is a deep social rift between the two ‘successors’: while syriza has inherited the bulk of the lower-income and working-class strata of the historical social bloc of pasok supporters, Democratic Left has attracted the upper-middle strata and a small but significant student layer who, amid the polarization caused by the economic crisis, have tended to gravitate towards conservative positions. In demographic terms, nd’s voter base—and pasok’s—is decidedly aged: among voters aged 65 and over, nd secured 48 per cent and pasok 21 per cent, while among those aged 55–64, the former scored 33 per cent and pasok 14 per cent (see Table 2E). These two age groups combined account for 63 per cent of nd’s voters and 67 per cent of
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pasok’s. Furthermore, the 65+ age group is the only one in which the old two-partyism remained at relatively high levels (nd’s and pasok’s scores adding up to 69 per cent). Conversely, syriza’s support among the over 65s was only 13 per cent, whereas its support among young people is strikingly high: 37 per cent among those aged 18–24, and 33 per cent in the 25–34 age-bracket, compared to figures of just 11 and 16 per cent for nd respectively. The age polarization of the electorate is unprecedented, and very deep; it too can be seen as a result of ideological shifts engendered by the economic crisis, as the younger population has been radicalized while the elderly have become more conservative. The support bases of the parties are also strongly differentiated in their geography. nd performed best in rural areas, polling 36 per cent, as against 28 per cent in urban centres (Table 2, F). pasok too did better in the countryside, with 16 per cent as opposed to 11 in the cities. It is syriza that has become the party of urban Greece, with 30 per cent of the vote; in Attica, which accounts for approximately one-third of the electorate, the party came first with 31 per cent of the vote, compared to 27 for nd and 9 for pasok. The social differentiation of the parties is also strongly reflected in the electoral geography of the capital, which clearly corresponds to the class division of the Athens metropolitan area, along an axis running north-east to south-west. New Democracy prevailed in northern and north-eastern municipalities and in the southeastern coastal zone of the Athens conurbation, which have the highest concentration of upper- and upper-middle-class strata. nd’s support in many of these areas exceeded 30 per cent, while in the most affluent suburbs it ranged from 50 to 70 per cent. Conversely, syriza’s strongest support in Athens—35 to 40 per cent— was among the working class and lower-income strata more broadly, which are concentrated in the outlying western and south-western municipalities of Athens and Piraeus. In predominantly middle-class areas, syriza again beat nd, though the gap was much narrower, while in the wealthier suburbs of the north-east and south-east, syriza polled only 6–11 per cent. The pattern of voting for Democratic Left in the capital, by contrast, displays greater similarities to the electoral geography of the conservative bloc. Its strongest voter support, at 9–10 per cent, was in the upper and middle strata of the north-east, while in the western working-class and lower-income suburbs it received 5–7 per cent, below its average of 8 per cent support in the capital. On the whole, the
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social-spatial polarization of the electorate is more pronounced than it has been for most of the post-dictatorship period. The elections of May and June 2012 have ushered in a period of political transition: the old two-partyism, which has now collapsed, is being replaced with a new polarity formed as a result of the neoliberal assault launched on Greek society by the implementation of the Memoranda. This new cleavage cuts across the left–right divide, pitting pro- and antiMemoranda forces against each other. The former pole is represented by the governing coalition, comprising nd, which is shifting increasingly to the right, and two centre-left parties in the form of pasok and Democratic Left, which are moving even farther from their original moorings as they seek to shore up the government’s legitimacy on its left flank. Confronting it are the anti-Memoranda forces; these include a portion of the right, represented by the Independent Greeks party, but it is syriza that has emerged as the dominant political formation among the middle- and working-class strata who have been impoverished by the economic crisis. This new polarization may in itself portend increasing social conflict. nd’s electoral victory was founded on intimidation of the electorate, rather than on any strong ideological consensus. As a consequence, its social legitimacy would appear to be limited. The implementation of the Troika programme of austerity and privatization will require an escalating clampdown on the protests and popular mobilizations it will provoke. Plastic bullets were recently used for the first time against a demonstration protesting the privatization of gold mines in northern Greece. The Samaras government has also ordered mass arrests of ‘foreigners’, including those with Greek citizenship; these are carried out by security forces that have a significant proportion of proto-fascist Golden Dawn members in their ranks. In these conditions an authoritarian turn, involving the adoption of a strategy of tension, seems quite likely.
syriza’s achievement is strongly reminiscent of the electoral success of the left in 1958, when the United Democratic Left (eda)—the legal mass party formed by the then-outlawed kke—won a quarter of the vote, marking the left’s return to the political stage after its defeat in the Civil War and the bitter repression that followed. Indeed, the repeat elections of 2012, and implosion of pasok, have overturned the long-standing primacy of the centre and centre-left parties over the left. Starting in the 1960s, first the Centre Union (ek) party and then, after the dictatorship,
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pasok had achieved a seemingly permanent electoral hegemony over working-class and radical voters. However, the economic turbulence of the last three years has brought a deepening crisis of representative institutions—affecting not only parties and parliament but all public bodies—that has decimated the old political forces, and pasok in particular. Their slump has generated, for the first time since the Civil War, objective possibilities for the formation of a new large-scale party of the left. From this perspective, the political provenance and ideological self-placement of current syriza voters are of particular interest: 31 per cent identify themselves as ‘socialists’, 11 per cent as ‘anti-capitalists/ anti-authoritarians’, 11 per cent as ‘social democrats’, 8 per cent as ‘communists’ and 6 per cent more generally as ‘leftists’.5 A new amalgam is being shaped, a radical yet still precarious confluence of the different historical currents of the left. Whether it will fully materialize will depend on syriza maintaining current levels of support, which is by no means certain. However, if something along these lines does occur, it will do so on completely different terms than in the past, as a reconstitution of the social forces who are paying the most to prop up a broken financial system, and have the least to gain from it. In that sense, the Greek elections of 2012 may have implications far beyond the country’s borders.
5
Nationwide telephone survey of 1,019 individuals by Public Issue, June 2012.
