In short, the elections on Sunday and gave a balanced result. Greek citizens may have favored SYRIZA, keeping its leader Alexis Tsipras’s claim for power alive, but also showed him that he definitely has a long way to go in order to actually assume some type of power. The chap is certainly -and luckily for us- not ready for that.
Citizens showed the government that they are fatigued from all the austerity measures that were imposed on them from Brussels and conservatives made it clear that they are very disappointed for the coalition with PASOK, (and especially with ND's indirect support to its leader Evangelos The Large Venizelos). But on the overall, and despite what most "progressive" Leftists media journals are saying on Monday, Greek citizens recognized Samaras' efforts to put things in order and get the economy back on track.
This is probably why Samaras said that the government received their message during his speech on Sunday night, and expressed the satisfaction that voters rejected the change that SYRIZA was promoting.
“I know that we had two difficult years. I went all over Greece. I listened to all citizens carefully. I know their problems . I know what and how it should be changed. And we will move quickly. As quickly as possible.”The conservatives believe that they have time to make their moves in order to correct the results but at the same time they recognize that this time has been limited now because of SYRIZA’s slight lead in the Euro elections. In any case, Samaras has a series of political aces up his sleeves, but as far as the economic policy of the country is concerned, he has no choice but to commit to the agreements that were signed by the previous PASOK government with the lenders. For example, he has to proceed pretty soon to pension subsidiary cuts and he is also committed to proceed to next layoffs in the public sector.
With Greek society and the economy still in a fragile condition, the Prime Minister’s plans now are to focus on stabilization in an effort to prove that his promises of exiting the crisis are true.
Various press reports on Monday began predicting a cabinet reshuffle and are definitely rejecting scenarios of general election being held in the autumn. It is, however, clear that all mechanisms are proceeding under the assumption that the current parliament is most likely to remain in place until the Presidential elections in March, 2015.
We trust this scenario as well, since Samaras has already spoken of righting injustices, and let us not forget that Venizelos announced a party conference for October.
Speaking of Evanjello: The chap was jumping with glee on Sunday night because he managed to mass 8 percent of the vote. At a press conference following the elections he told journalists that Tsipras' “blackmail”, and request for a referendum on the national strategy “was clearly rejected” by the Greek people and he based this opinion on the combined results of European, municipal and regional elections.
Tsipras, on the other hand is in another dimension altogether. He spoke about the need to establish a wider political alliance which would be able to win the next elections and obviously to do so he needs some time.
On Monday President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias received Tsipras, congratulating him on his party’s first-place result in Sunday’s EuroParliament elections.
After the meeting Tsipras warned Samaras against implementing new memorandum, salary cuts, layoffs and auctioning public assets, as well as appointing a new Governor of the Bank of Greece and a new EU Commissioner, as these appointments will be binding for the country in the years to come.
He also spoke about a serious political upset and underlined that this upset is evident not only as a result of SYRIZA lead in Sunday’s European elections but also because the parties of the government coalition lost 11 percentage points compared with the 2012 results. Tsipras said that this is a major disharmony and added that no one has the right to make crucial decisions that can be binding for the Greek people in the years to come, noting that the present parliament cannot elect a President.
The government’s response was immediate via its spokesman Simos Kedikoglou who stated that:
“Tsipras was unable to bring early elections upon us, did not convince the electorate of the “overthrow” he envisaged and proceeds to unprecedented institutional aberrations: The people were asked to vote for a European parliament, not for the country’s administration. Another diversion is the threats he flings towards the government in the lines of “they should not even consider… to govern”!Is he insisting on early national elections or is he trying to cause anarchy? Or both?”.
Venizelos also attacked the manner in which Tsipras approached the President because according to him it brought the latter in an extremely difficult position, "by having him listen to an unconstitutional proposal, which misrepresents the parliamentary system in Greece, the Constitution, and the country”.
The surprise was the rise of the popularity of the Golden Dawn party. As it shows, a considerable number of people completely ignored the bombardment of revelations that spoke of unproven criminal actions and they rewarded them by sending three of their MPs to the Europarliament.
They also emerged as the third political force in Greece but also in 28 of the 56 constituencies in the country. Specifically, Golden Dawn received 9.41%, of the vote, or approximately 1.4% more than that of Evanjello's PASOK/Elia party. In the state of Laconia they scored the highest percentage getting almost 15.54% of the vote, but that is not all. They also did quite well in northern Greek regions such as historical Pella, Imathia, Kastoria, Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Pieria and Evros. In Southern Greece they also did well in Corinth, Argolida and even in Attica.
The fact that Golden Dawn came third caused negative comments in Greece and abroad, with each party expressing their dislike and sadness for the popular endorsement of an organization whose leaders are in jail and face criminal offences.
The electoral presence of the Golden Dawn is associated with the trend of Euroscepticism and right wing – nationalist movements throughout Europe that got high percentages in the European elections.
Following the announcement of the results, GD’s spokesman, Elias Kassidiaris, expressed his party's gratitude to the Greek people but at the same time lashed out at Samaras as well as Tsipras.
"“They imprison us, muzzle us and slander us because they are afraid of us. The people spoke and now the demand is clear: The legitimacy and constitutional order must be restored immediately. To restore the sovereignty of the people and the representatives of the nation, the members of the Golden Dawn to exercise again free their parliamentary duties."The Independent Greeks party did not do that well at all since it saw its share of the vote more than halved since the June 2012 general election from 7.51 pct to just 3.45 pct. On Monday it announced that it is going to convene on Wednesday to discuss the party’s European elections result at a meeting that is going to be chaired by party leader Panos Kammenos and will be followed by a meeting of the party’s Executive Bureau.
Speaking to the state news agency ANA-MPA, Kammenos said he was troubled by his party’s losses and intended to hold an “open conference” – sometime in September – in an effort to unite “anti-memorandum patriotic forces”. According to his calculations the party lost some 200,000 votes since the 2012 elections, while smaller parties had gained some 450,000 votes. Some of those ‘lost’ votes, according to him, went to SYRIZA and Golden Dawn but others went to smaller parties of the right, such as the Union for the Homeland and the People, which had not gained a sufficient percentage of the vote to exercise influence but constituted a “serious political force” when combined.
He said the Independent Greeks would extend an invitation to these parties to cooperate at the planned conference.
DIMAR on the other is ready for a funeral. Its leader Fotis Kouvelis on Monday launched a round of meetings with leading party officials in order to assess his party's weak performance at the elections.
(Try getting rid of Maria Reppousi Mr. Kouveli... Maybe then you can come back with 3-4 percent of the vote).
In all, the outcome of Sunday's elections was friendly to the markets, since it did not disturb political stability, even if the performance of the governing New Democracy party were somewhat disappointing. This is what Nomura said in an announcement on Monday noting that the election results were in line with one of the three scenarios analyzed last week. At the same time it characterizes the low rate of the New Democracy party as raising some concern, since it shows that the party base remains weak, despite the nature of “relaxed voting” that European elections usually have.
Signed
HellasFrappe
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