A related discussion on PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff is viewable online.
The questions hovering over Greece’s June 17 general election are
many and momentous. Can Greece stay within the eurozone, rebuild trust with its
partners, fix its economy and reform its political system, all while governing
itself democratically?
Greece has had an appointed prime minister since last November
and a caretaker cabinet since a May 6 election failed to produce a government.
The country is now so distressed by four years of recession, a quarter of its
workforce unemployed and many other unpaid or underemployed, salary and pension cuts of as much as 50 percent for
those who still have them, a healthcare system showing signs of collapse and
the all-pervasive question of whether austerity is bringing it closer to
solvency or killing its economy faster, that people are apoplectic about whom
to vote for.
Parties have inevitably fallen into two categories: those in
favour of the European-led bailout loan worth 130 billion euro but accompanied
by a severe memorandum of austerity measures, and those against. Conservative
New Democracy emerged as the champion of the former on May 6, with 19 percent
of the vote, and radical left Syriza as the champion of the latter just two
points behind.
If opinion polls are any indication, June 17 will be a
neck-and-neck race between them. Each was polling as much as 30 percent of the
popular vote when a ban on poll publication in the last fortnight before the
election took effect. This was still far shy of the roughly 38 percent of the
vote needed to win power outright.
Knowing that one-party governments are a luxury of the past, the
primary goal for these two is to beat each other and claim a 50-seat bonus in
parliament that goes to the top party. That could then put either of them
within as little as a dozen seats of forming a government.
Politicians have polarised the public in pursuit of that bonus.
"We will on no account offer confidence or
support to a pro-memorandum government," said Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras
in a Contra channel interview on Monday night. "On June 18th we
will have a government of the left, or a memorandum government. There are only
two choices."
New
Democracy leader, Antonis Samaras, has portrayed the election equally starkly,
as a choice between the drachma and the euro. He told voters in northern Greece
yesterday: "This election... is about dilemmas that will be decisive for
the future of our children - dilemmas such as whether we stay in the eurozone
and stability, or go to the drachma and isolation."
Far from the madding crowds, however, the line between pro- and
anti- memorandum politics becomes more blurred. Yiorgos Stathakis, one of
Syriza's four key economic policy planners, was more nuanced when he talked
about Greece's loan agreement to Al Jazeera today. "We are not going to
change it or renegotiate the loan agreement," he said. "But
concerning the Greek programme – internal economic policies – there we propose
a completely different plan to get the economy out of the recession and be able
to have some form of social cohesion again... we will not move unilaterally to
make some sort of break with our European partners."
Notis Mitarakis, deputy shadow finance minister for New Democracy,
also left the door open a crack for a possible collaboration with Syriza.
"We need to change the [austerity] policy, because austerity alone hasn’t
worked, and... we need to make all the changes within the European
framework," he told Al Jazeera. "We will talk to anyone who feels
comfortable with these two conditions.
Greece is holding this repeat election because of the two parties'
refusal to collaborate last month. They were punished for this. Nothing was
more evident after the election than voters’ utter contempt for the entire
political class because of their failure to achieve a patriotic consensus.
It is now evident to the political world that Greeks are not going
to the polls to create two sumo wrestlers. As Stathakis tells Al Jazeera,
"If we are the second party, we will allow New Democracy to pursue its
policies and we’ll support whatever is positive and be critical of whatever is
negative. I think New Democracy will do the same thing if Syriza is the first
party."
There are fears that a coalition excluding one of the two big
players will merely buy time until the 2013 budget is presented in October. But
a spirit of bipartisanship could also be built. The two parties have similar
social platforms. Both want to help over-indebted households that pay more than
30 percent of their income to banks. New Democracy, for instance, would give
them the chance to service only interest payments, excluding principal, and
would subsidise interest on first home loans to the tune of two percent. Syriza
would extend loan maturities to bring down the monthly bill, and it would
completely write off loans to those not meeting a "dignified means of
living".
A second area of attraction is an emphasis on growth. Both parties
want to help kickstart the economy by bringing as much revenue as possible from
public real estate and natural wealth, such as renewable energy. Both want to
use every available penny of EU funds (Greece still has not absorbed some 14bn
euro in Community Support funds). Both want to reshape farming to produce
high-end, exportable goods, extend the tourist season and bring more Greek shipping
under the Greek flag.
Both are committed to cutting waste and corruption in the public
sector. New Democracy wants to start governing with just 15 ministries,
reducing them to ten. Syriza wants e-government, e-procurement and transparency
everywhere, something begun by Pasok. Above all, both want to keep Greece within the eurozone.
But the two parties’ substantive differences will be hard to
bridge. New Democracy wanted to lower the top tax bracket to 32 percent, and
have a flat 15 percent corporate tax. Syriza wants to slap the rich with a 75
percent tax rate and visit particularly harsh taxes upon large corporations.
Syriza would not be a true left party if it were not also statist.
It wants to reverse every privatisation that has taken place over the past 15 years,
and turn around state utilities to make a profit. The backbone of the economy,
Greece’s banking system, would be nationalised. New Democracy’s leader, Antonis
Samaras, has flatly stated that “everything that can be privatised will be
privatised.”
New Democracy wants illegal immigrants to be sent to detention
camps and then deported. Syriza wants those detention centres to be open
reception areas and to abolish deportations.
It
is difficult to see these differences being bridged without breaking moulds of
party thought and suffering losses on the extremes of each party. Syriza and
New Democracy might, of course, make a stronger effort this time around, seeing
how much closer the country is to the brink of collapse in social services. But
unless one of the smaller parties relents and agrees to form a coalition with
one of them, they are equally likely to try for a third round of elections. By
then, the public payroll, pensions and healthcare may have begun to unravel so
badly that central debate of these elections would be moot. Greece could be in
an ever clearer state of bankruptcy and its fiscal adjustment would have to
take place overnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.