Greek voters gave a clear sign of their disapproval of the government’s austerity policies on Sunday, voting heavily in favour of anti-bailout candidates in local and regional elections that are widely seen as offering a foretaste of next week’s European elections.
Exit polls put candidates backed by Syriza, the radical-left party that is the main opposition, ahead in Athens and the wider Attica region, in what was seen as a major setback for the country’s governing coalition.
Before next week’s much-anticipated European election, a Kapa research poll showed Gabriel Sakellaridis, the radicals’ candidate for Athens mayor, leading by 1.8 percentage points over the moderate leftwing incumbent, George Kaminis.
In the wider Attica region, Rena Dourou, a rising star in Syriza, led by 7.4 points over her nearest rival in the two-round race to become prefect.
“It is a punishment vote and reflects the internal divisions within the ruling parties,” Constantinos Routzounis, head of Kapa Research, told Reuters. “The following Sunday, we will see whether this vote has a deeper political significance.”
In a further shock for prime minister Antonis Samaras’s two-party administration, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party also appeared to have gained support. Ilias Kasidiaris, the far-right movement’s swastika-bearing spokesman – who was also contesting the Athens mayoralty – took about 15.5 per cent of the vote with some exit polls suggesting he had come in third. Ilias Panayiotaros, Golden Dawn’s candidate for Attica prefect, put in a similarly impressive performance, winning about 10 per cent.
The result is all the more surprising because the ultra-nationalist group, whose symbol resembles the swastika, is the focus of a judicial investigation that has already seen all 18 of its MPS being charged with “leading and operating” a criminal organisation.
Six of its MPs, including the party’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, are in prison pending trial.
“The whole system got us into this mess and the whole system needs a slap,” said Alekos Parathiras who once worked in the dockyards of Perama, where unemployment has reached record heights with Greece’s economic meltdown. “Everyone I know is voting for Golden Dawn because they are starving and jobless.”
Although the country long at the centre of Europe’s debt crisis has recently returned to international capital markets – with the ruling alliance also announcing it had overshot fiscal targets by achieving a primary budget surplus – these improvements have yet to be felt on the ground. Greeks, who have lost about 40 per cent of their purchasing power since the start of the crisis, have repeatedly voiced discontent in polls.
Alexis Tsipras, the radical left's main opposition leader, called the ballot a referendum on the EU-IMF sponsored rescue programme that is keeping the Greek economy afloat.
“In these four years, austerity policies have caused the greatest humanitarian crisis the country has ever suffered,” he told voters last week. “The government has called this dramatic situation a success story.”
The 39-year-old politician, campaigning as the European Left party candidate to be the next president of the European commission, replacing José Manuel Barroso, has been credited with boosting his party at home. – (Guardian service)