The true message from the ballot box
The entry into Parliament of three far-right parties and the radical leftist Course of Freedom is, without doubt, the most alarming message to emerge from Sunday’s general election. It should not, however, sully the deeper message from the ballot box, which, dare I say, is not negative. Confirming its decision on May 21, the electorate demonstrated that after a decade of seesawing between pragmatism and utopia, it is ready to get back to reality.
To explain myself, I do not believe that any of the parties that only just managed to cross the 3% threshold for entry into Parliament will have any real impact on political developments in the long term. If they decide to form attack squads similar to Golden Dawn’s, I am certain that the Spartiates (Spartans) will come up against the law. The political system is much more mature today than it was in 2012 and 2015, and more able to deal with them. As for the other newcomers in Parliament, I can’t imagine any of them growing out of their ludicrousness. The true message, therefore, lies elsewhere.
The tribulations of the memorandums pointed to the limits of the demagogues, and we now understand that there are no magical solutions to our big social problems
To begin with, New Democracy’s victory was very much Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ victory, and this is explained mainly by the overall assessment of his first term in office. Apart from the rather dark chapter of the wiretapping scandal and the blatant oversights in crucial areas of the state apparatus that he failed to modernize (the Tempe rail crash, excessive police force, migrant pushbacks), that term was favorably scored. I am sure that there are very few even among ND’s rivals who agree with the allegations of “Orbanization” and undermining the state of law. These are obvious exaggerations, and they convinced very few. What they did do was detract from whatever positives there were during SYRIZA’s term in government from the summer of 2015 on.
As for SYRIZA’s defeat, allow me to pose the following question: By insisting that everything is bleak and behaving like a minor party on the 3% threshold, have the leftists simply come to the end of their time on stage? Did the party, in other words, shift back to the fringe and return to its youthful practices once the memorandums were over, thus unknowingly ceding SYRIZA’s role as the main opposition to PASOK?
If nothing else, the rise of the far-right in Greece is a reflection of a trend that is evident in most of Europe today. Across the continent, the far-right is not only rising fast, but it has also even become a government partner in capitals where such a thing was unthinkable until recently, such as Stockholm and Helsinki, and has even risen to the seat of prime minister in Rome.
I would like to believe that Greece has not come to that yet and that the rise of the far-right here is circumstantial. The tribulations of the memorandums pointed to the limits of the demagogues, and we now understand that there are no magical solutions to our big social problems.
Nikos Alivizatos is emeritus professor of law at the University of Athens.
