Conservatives confirmed their victory in Greece, while the far right managed to return to parliament. On the 25th, Greeks went to the polls to vote in the second national election of that year. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the conservative New Democracy party, confirmed the favoritism and will be prime minister. Meanwhile, the left suffered one of its worst results in recent Greek history.
The May 21 election was the subject of a column here in our international politics space. At that time, the Greek parliament was stuck, without a clear majority and without the possibility of a government coalition. This was due to the fact that it was an atypical election, without the performance bonus system usually implemented in Greece, which was restored in this election.
It is the bonus system that explains the fact that New Democracy won 40.5% of the votes, less than in the previous election, but won 158 of the 300 seats in parliament, 12 more than in May. As the reader may have noticed, this guarantees the party a majority without the need for a coalition and Mitsotakis will remain prime minister, a position he has held since 2019, with a brief break last month.
failure of the left
Syriza, the main party of the Greek left today, continued in second place, but with only 17.8% of the seats and 48 seats, losing 23 compared to the previous election. Alexis Tsipras has resigned as party leader, saying Syriza needs reforms and new leadership. Currently 48 years old, he was Prime Minister from 2015 to 2019, the youngest holder of the position.
In third place was Pasok, an acronym for Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, the traditional Greek social-democratic party, founded after the military dictatorship of the 1970s. Syriza is more recent and more to the left of the political spectrum, while Pasok has also nationalist positions on issues such as Cyprus. In the previous election, Pasok “stole” several Syriza voters.
This time, Pasok had 11.8% of the votes and won 32 seats. In fourth place was the traditional Greek Communist Party, of the radical left, with 7.6% of the vote and 20 seats. The Greek CP was the only left-wing party that had more voters in June than in May, despite having lost six seats, due to the bonus system that rewards the first place. Another party already present in parliament is the Greek Solution.
The right-wing nationalist party won 4.4% of the vote and 12 seats, both numbers lower than in May. This is due to the fact that the Greek parliament will have three new parties, two of which are on the right, including a neo-fascist party. The number of rookies was partially facilitated by the fact that voter turnout shrank by 8.2% of the total electorate, with 52.8% of voters voting.
In May, for example, Niki’s “Victory” party received more than 172,000 votes, but fell below the 3% threshold clause. This time, the Plefsi Eleftherias party, “Towards Freedom”, had around 165,000 votes. The raw number was smaller, but, proportionally, it guaranteed eight seats to the left-wing populist party, with flags against the fiscal austerity measures adopted in Greece since the 2008 crisis.
The aforementioned Niki had 3.6% of the votes and won ten seats. The party is religiously conservative, founded with the support of some segments of the Greek Orthodox Church. Most of their votes came from Northern Greece, possibly due to the fact that the party is explicitly critical of the 2018 agreement between Greece and North Macedonia, also covered here in our space.
In addition to the nationalist flag, it also defends conservative postures in the so-called “customs guidelines” and its motto is “Faith, Nation and family”, an Orthodox Christian motto also used in other countries, such as Serbia and Montenegro. Finally, with 4.6% of the vote, around 241,000 gross votes, the Spartiátes party, “Spartans”, took 12 seats, marking the return of a neo-fascist party to the Greek parliament for the first time since 2019.
neofascist return
Between May 2012 and July 2019, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party had around 20 seats in the Greek parliament, always in opposition. Its founder, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, was a vocal admirer of Nazi Germany and spread conspiracy theories, such as historical Holocaust denial. In 2020, he and 67 other party members were convicted of criminal association.
Golden Dawn was banned and, among the crimes attributed to its leaders, were homicides, extortion and involvement in the disappearance of up to one hundred immigrants in Greece. One of the condemned leaders of the party was former parliamentarian Ilias Kasidiaris, who even quoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Parliament, a book forged in Tsarist Russian times that purports to be a Jewish handbook on “world domination.”
The historical farce of the Protocols, brought to Brazil by the integralist Gustavo Barroso, is a landmark of anti-Semitism. Kasidiaris founded an unofficial “successor” to the Golden Dawn, the National Party, which was banned from elections by the Electoral Court, which considered it a continuation of the previously banned party. Kasidiaris, then, who is serving 13 years in prison, sought an already established legend.
In 2017, Vasilis Stigkas, a militant of religious nationalist movements, founded the Spartanos party, which had never contested a national election. The main thing, however, is that the party had a valid electoral record. With pardon for the obvious pun, Kasidiaris used Espartanos as a Trojan horse for his neo-fascist supporters, winning 12 seats.
Stigkas publicly thanked Kasidiaris. Of the 12 elected lawmakers, ten are from Kasidiaris’ circle, including his personal lawyer. The party, whose campaign has revolved around nationalist, irredentist and anti-immigrant slogans, attests on its website that it seeks to be “the iron arm and true bulwark that will put an end to the decline and selling out of Greece and Greek citizens”.
While Greece needs to deal with the impact of the recent shipwreck that left hundreds dead, it will be up to Prime Minister Mitsotakis to govern Greece not only according to his conservative legend, legitimate in the electoral race, but also in a way that distances his government from the neo-fascist return to Greek parliament. At the back of the room, the Greek left will have to reorganize and bounce back after a historic failure.
#return #neofascism #Greek #Parliament