‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’
I don’t know if we have realized how rare it is in today’s global reality what our country has today: political stability. For better or worse, this is basically due to the fact that the party of New Democracy survived the era of the financial crisis and the bailouts and managed to maintain a high percentage, over 40%, in elections, while at the same time avoiding the risk of proportional representation.
If you look around us in Europe, there are very few parties in power that now achieve such high percentages. Political instability and fluidity are the norm while major traditional parties have shrunk.
New Democracy could easily be two parties today, maybe even three. Its leader and prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, created a political recipe that brought under the same roof centrists, right-wingers, former leftists who became anti-SYRIZA. It is a recipe that tries to reconcile State Minister Makis Voridis with the premier’s economic adviser Alexis Patelis, the very patriotic right with the more liberal center-left audience. It sometimes results in evenings where the prime minister is forced to attend two events, as if addressing two completely different “parishes” at the same time.
The right is held back by an emphasis on the strengthening of the Hellenic Armed Forces, the extension of the fence on the Evros and a policy of stopping illegal immigrants. The center, with liberal measures and appointments of center-left people in key positions.
Will this recipe last long? It is certainly more difficult to succeed without Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA on the other side of the political aisle, although there is no party leader on the horizon who could win over either center-left or far-right voters. Of course, to succeed, he must avoid arrogance and, most importantly, wrong choices. The recipe of a wider New Democracy rests on very delicate balances. There are a lot of hurt people who are ready to adopt the extremes. One reads angry comments on social media every day, either from one political ideology or the other.
The fans of ideological purity may not realize what it would mean in practice for the political situation and the future of Greece. As we know, recipes succeed when they bind together and produce a wonderful balance between different ingredients. The same is true for recipes in politics. If New Democracy’s recipe had not succeeded, we could easily have had today a centrist party like the now defunct To Potami, a bigger traditional New Democracy that would not, however, be able to secure power, and an ultra-conservative party. A chaos, that is, as we have observed in many countries with a tradition of political stability. With this in mind, one could argue, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – for however long this lasts.
