The Greek Elections

Guest post by Christos Loutradis

Hands up, who knew there’s an election in Greece tomorrow? The snap election triggered by unpopular conservative Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis seeking a new mandate for his ailing New Democracy party to tackle the economy has received little coverage in the UK. But is the all but certain victory of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and former foreign minister, George Papandreou a strong sign from the Greeks of a wind of change, or simply a matter of urgency owing to Karamanlis’s inability to deal with the consequences of the financial crisis?

Papandreou and Karamanlis certainly have one thing in common. They are the progeny of two leading political families in Greece. Karamanlis’s uncle, Konstantinos, was the first democratically elected Prime Minister after the fall of the military junta in 1974. Karamanlis junior’s term in office, however, will be forever associated with financial scandal and social unrest. Papandreou, on the other hand, is the son and grandson of past Prime Ministers. His stint as foreign minister between 1999 and 2004 marked the thawing of traditionally frosty relations with Turkey and Albania and the cooling of nationalistic rhetoric.

Despite the establishment background of the two candidates, however, this election offers Greeks an ideological choice between conservatism and social democracy. Papandreou’s proposals to increase corporation tax and social investment have been met with strong criticism from the business community, and from Karamanlis, who accuses his opponent of a suicidal policy that will lead to the total removal of growth from Greece’s economic lexicon.

If American-born Papandreou is elected, he will be the first Greek premier born outside of the country. His heritage has earned him the nickname ‘the American’ in the Greek media, a title that is not wholly undeserved given Papandreou’s borrowing of policies from the Obama campaign, promising greater co-operation with US plans to tackle the global financial crisis and pushing towards a greener economy.

If Karamanlis loses tomorrow, it will owe as much to his failure as to his rival’s success. He was elected in 2004 after twenty years of PASOK dominance with the seemingly simple idea to re-introduce morality into the public political sphere. But the man governed with illusions and was trapped by them, not least the belief that victories in Euro 2004 and the Eurovision song contest could provide answers for the problems that Greece faces. How could he have known, studying International Relations in America, that relations with the US would play such an important part in his political future, or lack thereof.

The elections are still a day away, but Papandreou is already regarded the Prime Minister in waiting. The crucial question that remains will be how a new PASOK government will deal with a rising budget deficit whilst tackling high unemployment. The main dilemma of the upcoming election: can the political elites that have led Greece to the edge of financial collapse formulate a concrete and feasible plan for the country to avoid bankruptcy? Iceland is not, after all, so very far away.