The election campaing is over. Both sides are exhausted. The voters due to the permanent bombing of political spots and endless discussions on radio and TV. The political parties and the candidates after a short but stressful and active three-weeks long campaign period. Decided voters are eager to go and cast their votes, undecided voters still have to contemplate whom they will favor or who to reject.
The big dilemma of these historical elections in Greece has been : “Memorandum or Not” or as the Papademos coalition government parties claim ” Euro or Drachma”. They want to persuade voters that should they reject the parties that took the country to IMF (PASOK) and those that supported the second bailout (Nea Dimocratia) they will have to face hazardous consequenses like being kicked out from the euro zone and the EU and they will get really poor.
Poorer than through the harsh austerity measures and lack of structural reforms that pushed more than one million people to unemployment and rash impoverishment, not to mention the deep recession with further negative perspective and those small investors who lost money through the Greek bond swap (PSI).
Will disappointed PSAOK and ND voters of the past bow to this blackmail?
Smaller political parties from left and right either reject the loan agreements all together or promise re-negotiation.
At these elections almost 1o million registered voters have the possibility to chose among 32 parties.
Official opinion polls had pointed to the possibility of 8-1o parties passing the threshold and enter the parliament. However publishing of polls is banned two weeks before the elections.
Rolling polls conducted by political parties and leaked to websites and blogs create a rather confused picture about the elections outcome. According to rolling polls, the percentage of undecided voters is still high, reaching almost 14 percent, a day before the elections Furthermore there is a small percentage of people unwilling to answer opinion polls.
What is looks quite sure is that first party will be conservative Nea Dimocratia, second PASOK , third left-wing SYRIZA, fourth Communist KKE. Democraticl Left and nationalist Independent Greeks are expected to follow.
Parties like Eco-Greens, far-right LAOS, neo-liberal Democratic Alliance and Drasi are going to struggle for the 3% threshold.
Surprises are expected here, as undediced voters move from one political field to another – depending on the party leaders speeches and slogans. But hardly anyone in Greece believes that a party will manage to get absolute majority. Not a single official opinion polls showed such a perspective.
There is also a good 6% of voters who will cast their votes for smaller parties like ANTARSYA, Pirates and other who in general opinion polls do not get more than 2 percent.
A percentage of 3 t0 4 is willing to cast a ‘blank‘ or ‘invalid‘ vote just to show their discontent.
The rates are important but difficult to predict exactly.
My personal prediction is:
ND 20.1%- 25% , PASOK 12%-14%, SYRIZA 11%-13% , KKE 8%-8.5%, Democratic Left 5.5%-6.5%, Independent Greeks 5.5%-7% – Chrysi Avgi 3%-3.8% – Eco-Greens 3% -LAOS 2.9-3%
For sure, we will know on Sunday evening.
Click HERE to Read more about Greek Elections 2012
“Memorandum or Not” = ”Euro or Drachma”
It is wrong to state that staying in the euro will make people poorer than leaving it or the other way around. In both cases a lot of Greeks will be really poor at the end of the day.
The problem with putting it this way is that if Greece goes out of the Euro and into the Drachma the same old crooks will get their hands again on the money presses. And they will be able to go on with what they have been doing until now.
Some will say that this doesn’t matter as long as these crooks are ‘our’ crooks and not foreigners… With a vision like that every reasoning stops.
But for the rest of us there is a real Catch 22: if you don’t want the memorandum you’ll end up with the drachma which will lead to the consolidation of the status quo. If you want to stay in the euro to be able to change the system you will have to vote for the memorandum, which is not leading to any real change because the old nomenklatura is preventing that. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But in both cases you will be really poor.
“I wanna go home” E.T.
…and ‘home’ is Greece… Another catch 22. 😆
Im afraid ET cant go home because he is technically an illegal immigrant. he needs to be medically tested and put into one of the camps for immigrants.
antonis in these elections there is literaly no good result.all results are bad. there is even no gradient of a bad choice and a worse choice. its simply bad all round. i would be stupid to vote for pasok nd as these are the same people who stole, cheated and mismanaged for the past 40 years, voting them is like saying yes please another portion of the same is what i want. i wont even mention the actual extremes both left (kke) and right (golden dawn) it should be evident why they should not be voted for, the main reason being they both have no respect for actual democracy. and the other parties in between offer no real solutions either. and on top of that you have the european officials warning and blackmailing and telling greeks how to vote. these are supposed to be people who value democratic process but apparently only when its convenient for them.
it was obvious I’d edit your comment containing baseless allegations.
and KKE is not etxreme.
A party that has close and warm relations with the likes of North Korea and is one of the last real Stalinist Communist Party in the world is not extreme???
OK in a country with a very Stalinist way of governing, like Greece, it might not look that way. I grant you that. But it’s a bold statement, to say it mildly.
By Con George-Kotzabasis April 27, 2012
History has shown that at critical moments, in countries of advanced and high culture, men of stupendous ability, imagination, foresight, and fortitude, sprang, like phoenixes from the ashes, to salvage their countries from mortal threats. Themistocles at the battle of Salamis that saved Greece from the barbarian Persian invasion, is one example, the other is Charles Martel, who at the battle of Poitiers stopped the barbarian Muslim invasion from conquering Europe. In our modern contemporaneous times, Greece, on the verge of being devoured and crashed by the ‘hungry fangs’ of default and economic poverty, is just as promptly to be saved by a modern-day Periclean statesman, Antonis Samaras…
ROFL!!!! Thank you Con George-Kotzabasis, you just made my day! And when everybody has his breath back, my advise to all my fellow countrymen is to run like mad for cover when Samaras becomes Khalief instead of the Khalif… 😆
***
On second thought: comparing this conniving opportunist with Periclis is such a kick in the private parts of Periclis that it is almost not funny anymore… 🙄
I wish I could make your knight!