Opposition rejects last-minute addition to postal voting that ‘undermines consensus’

A last-minute amendment tabled by the Conservative government to extend postal voting rights to expatriates in national elections was rejected by the entire opposition.

The bill on mail-in voting had initially secured the support “in principle” from three opposition parties: SYRIZA, PASOK and Course of Freedom, following extensive consultation with the government. Although there were significant objections to individual arrangements and articles, the bill was set to be approved by 230 of the lawmakers.

However, the consensus collapsed after Interior Minister Niki Kerameus surprised lawmakers by tabling a last-minute amendment on Monday afternoon which extended the postal vote of expatriates to national elections. In the previous days, Kerameus had stated that “the framework of the [new] legislation concerns the European elections.”

“National elections have a different legislative framework. It’s not the same. It is regulated in the Constitution, the provisions are different, the legislative regime is different, the debate is different,” she told state-run broadcaster ERT.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had expressed a wish to include national elections but had said that the proposed law would, for now, exclusively concern the European Parliament elections and referendums.

SYRIZA parliamentary group leader Sokratis Famellos said the surprise amendment “proves that New Democracy not only does not want consensus, but undermines it.”

The party’s parliamentary spokesman Theofilos Xanthopoulos added: “The government took an initiative for voting in the European elections and along the way, Ms Kerameus suddenly dropped on the table the proposal to extend the postal vote to the national elections as well, with the result that an initially declared consensus turned into a radical opposition. This is a ploy by which the government tried to steal the vote of the opposition parties to complete the increased majority of 200 MPs needed to approve the extension in the national elections as well.”

In the same vein, PASOK’s Michael Katrinis said on Wednesday: “Mr Mitsotakis treats the opposition parties almost as extras who are obliged to support his ambitions. But you have to realize that PASOK is not the party that supports Mr Mitsotakis and his government.”

For his part, the leader of the Greek Solution, Kyriakos Velopoulos, claimed that it was a vindication for his party to have convinced “PASOK, SYRIZA and the rest of the parties that what ND is doing is stealing the votes of the expatriates. The bill is proof that ND is planning to commit fraud,” he added.

On the part of the New Left, Nasos Iliopoulos said: “Other opposition forces, which in principle voted in favor of the bill, have a huge responsibility for how generously they voted for an unconstitutional bill and how they paved the way for the coup that Kerameus and the government tried to make with the amendment that they introduced at the last minute and belatedly.”

Mitsotakis justified the last-minute introduction, adding that the amendment will be reintroduced after the European elections. 

“It was an important opportunity for consensus, but for reasons I find really difficult to understand, both PASOK and SYRIZA are turning their backs by voting against it, even though they had initially agreed to it. I am frankly surprised at both the backtracking and the dust that has been raised around this issue,” he added.

The bill on postal vote was eventually approved with only 158 votes from the MPs of ruling New Democracy.