The crisis is now
As fundamental structures collapse, the architecture no longer holds and the crisis of Greece’s political parties is reaching a tipping point.
It’s not new; but instead of being a sudden, short, violent phenomenon, the political crisis has been a drawn-out, tortuous normality ever since 2012.
The collapse of society’s trust in the system, imprinted in the result of the election held in May and June of that same year which saw voters turning away from the political pillars, marked the end of the two-party system that had dominated the scene since 1977.
The political system never recovered from that blow. Its crisis became the status quo, an element of how the country functioned. Now, 50 years after the restoration of democracy following the 1967-1974 dictatorship, the crisis of the political system is speeding up.
The substantial redistribution of wealth at the expense of wage earners, the decline of the National Health System in favor of the private sector, the clientelism-driven management of European resources, the prevalent sense of corruption, the overall inefficiency of a government that seems exhausted in its sixth year in power eroded New Democracy’s 41% and led the governing conservatives to nosedive to below 28% in the recent European elections. Signs of progressive decay, with a “clash of civilizations” between the liberal and the far right raging and the absence of an attractive national narrative, have spurred a poisonous suspicion that is becoming more and more prevalent: that the downward spiral is irreversible.
Opposition SYRIZA, limping along under the weight of false beliefs and ideological fixations that displaced rational thought and increasingly obscured the constellation of ideas and values of the Left, detached from reality and in (self-)isolation from the vibrant forces of society, politically dazed and increasingly irrelevant, was already in an advanced state of disintegration when a random political hermit crab looking for a party shell came its way – and it let him take over.
Fully mutated and shrinking fast, SYRIZA exists in name only right now: It is already trailing PASOK in public opinion polls and coming in third place and nothing seems capable of stopping it from dropping further. What is the best-case scenario? That no more time is lost! And if it does not clearly project what its new manifestation will look like, let it be done with the old – enough harm has been done.
History has shown us that there are no dead ends in politics; the only dead end is arguing that you’re up against one. It’s a ploy used by the professional managers of an obsolete political system to entrap or neutralize political forces that could support a different path.
The party system is a dead end, though: Driven by clientelism and preventing participation on independent, selfless and responsible terms, it will not or cannot create the consensus necessary for the big reforms the country needs and ultimately hinders its progress. In terms of the public interest, this political system no longer has a raison d’etre.
