Can Greece Govern Itself?

This analysis was first published on Al Jazeera.

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 18^th 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.