With an unprecedented power angry and frustrated voters overturned the Greek political system right from the grounds. The results are not only a slap in the face of the bipartisanship of conservative Nea Democratia and socialist PASOK. It is also a strong message against the hardships of the Memorandum of Understanding, the loan agreements that demand just blood but contain no perspective for development and growth. The “Lab Rats” took the risk and revolted!
As of 11:10 Monday morning, the latest elections results with 99.10% of the votes counted are:
1. NEA DIMOCRATIA 18.88% 108 seats
2. SYRIZA 16.76% 52 seats
3. PASOK 13.19% 41 seats
4. INDEP GREEKS 10.60% 33 seats
5. KKE 8.47% 26 seats
6. Chrysi Avgi 697% 21 seats
7. Democratic Left 6.10% 19 seats
19% of the candidate political parties did not manage to pass the 3% threshold and remain outside the parliament.
Voting absention is almost 36%.
At 01:00 pm Parliament Speaker will pay a visit to the President of the Republic and announce the official results.
At 3 pm President Karolos Papoulias is expected to give the mandate to form a government to ND-leader Antonis Samaras. The marathon of exploratory talks to form a coalition government of “national unity” or “salvation” or call it what-you-want will start.
Many scenarios about Greece’s next government are going around and I’ll post them during the day. Simple electin results arithmetics say that a broader coalition government with a clear Yes or No to Memorandum of Understanding is not possible.
With 99.3% of the vote counted there are a couple conclusions to make:
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During this election campaign PASOK and ND abandoned the middle ground. ND a bit more. Samaras steered way to the right the last couple of weeks. At that same moment his right wing split off. Wonderful irony. But now we will maybe have about 162 seats (almost 40% of the votes) for the right in parliament. (ND, AE, XA)
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SYRIZA’s showing is impressive indeed. Becomming 2nd party of the country. And they rightly so want to try to form coalitions.
But the left, including the KKE reaches at the moment only to 138 seats. Although they have 44,5% of the votes. It looks like Tsipiras has had one of those horrible ‘victory-defeats’.
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The KKE must be in total despair by now. In the biggest economic and political crisis in a generation they do not pick up any votes. They have their wanted ‘Verehlendung’ and still the working class is not turning to them. Time for a new leadership? And some serious Perestroika?
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And last: 19% of the votes went to parties who didn’t get 3% and won’t be represented in parliament. Anybody any idea if this might have an effect on the current seats? Or is this already calculated in?
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It is gonna be a strange week…