Many Losers and Two Winners in the Greek Elections

AIM Athens, April 22, 2000

The 9 April parliamentary elections in Greece turned out to be, rather unexpectedly, a contest with great many losers, but also two winners. A party that was represented in parliament after the previous September 1996 elections and had markedly improved its score in last year's European Parliament elections, but was eliminated from parliament this time is certainly a loser. That was socialist splinter Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI), headed by Dimitris Tsovolas, a populist party that was becoming more and more nationalist. Tsovolas was the only European party leader to attend Milosevic's "socialist" party congress one month before the elections. DIKKI received 2.7%, just short of the 3% threshold to enter parliament, as compared with 4.4% -and 9 deputies (MPs)- in 1996, and 6.9% -and 2 Eurodeputies (MEPs)- in 1999.

On the other hand, one can speak of an electoral defeat for a party that barely made it with 3.2% and 6 MPs, down from 5.1% in both 1996 and 1999 contests (that secured it then 10 MPs and 2 MEPs respectively). It was the erstwhile intellectually-oriented Progressive Left Coalition (Synaspismos), joined this time by the extra-parliamentary leftist Renewal Communist and Ecological Left (AKOA) and one of the multiple splinters of the Ecologists-Alternatives. Synaspismos too had been recently distancing itself from the vanguard European-and human-rights-oriented critical left positions. Its leader, Nikos Constantopoulos, had also paid a solidarity visit to Mr. Milosevic, last year during the war.

The traditional and doctrinaire Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the only party with a woman leader -Aleka Papariga-, was by no means a winner either. It barely repeated its 1996 performance (5.6% and 11 MPs) but fell well short of its impressive 1999 one (8.7% and 3 MEPs) even though its lists had again, as in 1999, a "red-brown" color, as they included notoriously nationalist if not supremacist public figures. One of the latter, joournalist Liana Kanelli, was elected to parliament thanks to the safe candidacy the party awarded her, at the expense of two traditional apparatchiks. It need be mentioned here, anecdotally, that Kanelli's militant ethnocentric and obsessive anti-EU and anti-Western monthly "Nemesis" had been financed by the EU.

The main opposition party, rightwing New Democracy (ND), was also a -very sour- loser of these elections. It came second with 42.7% and 125 MPs, merely 1.1% behind PASOK. This was certainly higher than the 1996 and 1999 scores (38.1% with 108 MPs and 36% with 9 MEPs respectively). Nevertheless, ND was in 2000 the only credible party to the right of PASOK. Nationalist Political Spring headed by Antonis Samaras (that had fallen just short of the threshold with 2.9% in 1996 and 2.3% in 1999) did not contest the election. While the splinter Liberals, headed by Stefanos Manos (formed just before the 1999 Euroelections where it received 1.6%), joined this year the ND lists, which helped it secure two (of the 125) seats.

Neither the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) was a real winner. Certainly it came first with 43.8% (up from 41.5% in 1996 and 32.9% in 1999) and secured a seat majority in parliament (158 seats out of 300). But in 1996 it had a larger lead over ND (3.4% vs. 1.1% now) and more seats,

1. This paradox, incidentally, is the result of the peculiar "reinforced proportional representation" electoral system that produces for the first two parties results somewhat equivalent to the first-past-the post majority systems, in use mostly in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Most importantly, however, PASOK announced last February that it was going to ask the President of the Republic, Constantine Stephanopoulos -after his then anticipated re-election in March to a second five-year term- to call early elections in April, rather than in the end of the parliament's term in September or October. This decision was based on the party's hope, backed by favorable opinion polls, to secure a "clear mandate," meaning a lead of at least 2%-3% over ND and around 165 seats. This judgment was at the time based on two factors. First, two recent foreign policy successes: the achievement of a Greek-Turkish rapprochement, and EU's decision that Greece was finally ready to join the EMU in 2001.

Secondly, two poll indicators: PASOK's leader and Prime Minister Costas Simitis was far ahead of his challenger, ND leader Costas Karamanlis, in the question of who was the most able to govern the country; while PASOK was easily leading ND in the people's expectations of who was going to win the elections. The fact that, in the vote intentions, PASOK was ahead by a mere 1%-2% was not perceived to be a problem, as it too was reversing the trend through mid-1999, confirmed in the June 1999 Euroelections, of PASOK lagging behind ND. PASOK and most observers believed in early 2000 that PASOK was forging ahead and was unstoppable.

So, when the first exit poll results started becoming known to party circles in the afternoon of election day 9 April, while Greeks were still voting, the PASOK leadership was confounded. ND was estimated to be the first party by some decimal points, probably enough to secure it a seat majority in parliament. At 7pm, television channels came out equally confounded: on the basis of their exit polls, three were showing ND ahead by as much as 1% vs. two that were giving a marginal 0.1% lead to PASOK. Only late in the evening the actual results showed that the winner was in fact PASOK, but by the smallest margin and with an opposition with the highest vote share, in recent Greek electoral history. PASOK was in no mood to celebrate, as it had failed to secure a "clear mandate."

As it became evident on election night, exit polls were another loser, as they created confusion, and, certainly, not one did it predict that PASOK was to have a 1% lead over ND. As it was the first time exit polls were to estimate such a close election, the companies carrying them out appeared unprepared. Ex post facto, it was shown that, indeed, it was the voters that went to the polls in late afternoon and early evening who gave PASOK the lead. The two -foreign-backed- companies that picked up this trend were the only ones that indicated a slight PASOK lead at 7 pm. The others were reportedly influenced by the rolling polls in the two weeks preceding the elections that were all showing ND overtaking PASOK: so, on election day, the exit polls appeared to just confirm that trend and these pollsters felt safe to make the (wrong) estimations. However, once again, as in preceding elections when it mattered less, a close scrutiny of these rolling polls showed that PASOK was picking up steam in the closing 48 hours: hardly any pollsters bothered to look at that

Other losers of the elections included the extreme rightwing, outright xenophobic, if not neo-fascist, parties: three of them ran, only to receive 0.5% altogether. A meager 0.5% went to the new socialist splinter and hyper-nationalist Democratic Regional Union (DIPE) headed by Mihalis Haralambidis and including public figures notorious for their belligerent anti-Turkish attitude and their implication in the tragically failed Ocalan effort to find refuge in Greece, in early 1999. For the record, the remaining 1.1% went to half-a-dozen extreme left parties (0.4%) and another half-a-dozen apolitical parties or local independent candidates (0.7%).

The officially called Muslim, but by choice mostly Turkish, minority was also a loser, as it returned only one of the three deputies, Galip Galip of PASOK from the Rodopi district. Following the rapprochement with Turkey and last year's statement by Foreign Minister George Papandreou acknowledging the right to self-identification of minorities, Greece's Turks voted massively for PASOK. Unlike in 1996 and even in 1999, when they had distributed their votes to all parties, which, thanks to the peculiarities of the electoral system, helped them secured three seats. In 2000, the minority's swing to PASOK meant that the outgoing ND deputy in Xanthi, Birol Akifoglu, stood to lose his seat but PASOK's leading minority candidate in the same district failed to win a seat by a mere 450 votes, as Akifoglu managed to keep quite a sizeable following. As for the third deputy, Mustafa Mustafa, his party lost to PASOK in Rodopi 40% of its 1996 following, but the seat was lost only because, nationwide, DIKKI did not make it past the 3% threshold: had it been successful, Synaspismos would have won one of its six seats in Rodopi rather than in Salonica, just as it did in 1996, with the Salonica seat going to DIKKI. This is one of the irrational elements of the country's electoral system.

So, who were the two winners of these elections? The two Costas, Simitis and Karamanlis. There is widespread agreement that PASOK did not manage in the end to edge ND because of the party image: it was somewhat expectedly worn out after 15 of the last 19 years in power and it was certainly not much helped by its old-fashioned electoral campaign. PASOK won because a considerable number of Greek voters preferred Simitis as Prime Minister, even though they found his party unattractive: the exit polls confirmed that impression. The next day, it was also clear that many PASOK deputies that belonged to the internal -"patriotic," i.e. nationalist- opposition were defeated. So, many more deputies of a somewhat smaller -by four seats- parliamentary group now back Simitis than was the case in 1996. This was reflected in the new government that, everyone agrees in Athens, is for the fist time a genuine "Simitis government" without the need to balance portfolios between inter-party factions.

On the other hand, Karamanlis was also a winner. In the beginning of the campaign, he lagged far behind his rival and many had started betting on who would be his successor after an anticipated large defeat. By election day, though, ND's image had dramatically improved. This was achieved mostly thanks to a modern electoral campaign, that exploited all weak points of PASOK, and a very conciliatory and moderate tone ND adopted during the closing days. It was also helped by a televised Simitis-Karamanlis debate that was perceived as a "draw" between the two rivals, hence a success for Karamanlis, until then considered -personality-wise- weak. Despite the marginal loss, Karamanlis emerged as the undisputed leader of the center-right and right, whhich had rallied behind him.

This election result calls for the Simitis government to become more efficient and less arrogant in order to be successful. On the other hand, it makes it necessary for PASOK to seek to broaden its support so as to avoid defeat in four years. Or, alternatively, to amend the electoral law so as to help reflect in the next parliament the fact that, still today, 56% of the voters voted for the center-left socialist and the other leftwing parties, the highest such percentage anywhere in Europe. It is widely agreed that the third Simitis government (after the first in early 1996 when he succeeded to Andreas Papandreou, and the second following the electoral victory in September 1996) enjoys no "honeymoon."

Panayote Dimitras