The Greek
Elections of September 2007
The September 16
election held in
Prime Minister
Karamanlis (ND) opted for early elections because an election victory of the ND
seemed sure. He and his government intend to push forward and speed-up their
program of counter-reforms. The ND fell from 45.4% to 41. 8% of the votes, but
can continue to govern with 152 out of 300 deputies due to the undemocratic
election law. The government is weakened, but the result was a relative success
for it. The surprise was that the PASOK, the main opposition party, also
suffered big losses and fell from 40. 6% to 38.1%. The votes for the the big two parties, which used to guarantee a certain
stability of the social and political system in favour
of capitalist class rule after 1974, decreased from 85. 9% to 79.9%.
The election winners
were the traditionalist Stalinist Communist Party of Greece ( CPG) which rose
from 5.9 to 8.2% and the left alliance SYRIZA, consisting of the former Eurocommunist, left reformist SYN (“Alliance of the Left”)
and some smaller leftist groups, among them the left Stalinist KOE (“Communist
Organization of Greece”) and two semi-Trotskyist
groups, DEA (“Internationalist Workers’ Left,” a split from the SEK and close
to the ISO/US) and “Kokkino” (“Red,” a split from
DEA, interested in the 4th International). SYRIZA rose from 3.2 to 5.0%. If one
adds the results of the extra- parliamentarist
groups, the CPG-ML (0.24%), the ML-CPG (0.11%), the alliances MERA (0.17%) and
ENANTIA (0.15%), to which the OKDE-Spartakos, the
Greek section of the 4th International, also belongs, the total
result of the Greek left is 13.9%.
At the same time,
the right-wing extremist and racist
Thus, the election
is marked by a polarization to the left and to the extreme right at the expense
of the big parties of the centre-right and centre-left. This trend is likely to
get stronger in the future because the economic and political crisis is
sharpening and class contradictions are increasing. Despite the election
victory of the ND and the success of
The Defeat of the
PASOK
The PASOK was not
able to take advantage of various scandals of the ND government, like the
robbing of pension funds, the policy of privatization of the universities,
corruption affairs, the brutality of the police, the increasing debts of
private households and the rise in prices. This failure is partly attributable
to the bland president,
The rank and file of
the party, in the past rather active, was virtually dissolved by the
leadership. G. Papandreou himself recently declared that the PASOK “has
transformed itself into an apparatus of exercising power and has ignored the
needs of broad popular layers.” The trade union leadership, still to a large
extent controlled by PASOK bureaucrats, try, with very
few exceptions, to suffocate all kinds of rank and file mobilizations against
pro-business measures. In the 2–3 weeks before the election, Papandreou tried
to change the situation by making verbally significant promises in the
direction of the working people and the non-privileged popular layers, but the
electorate did not take them very seriously. After all, the PASOK got what it
deserved for more or less unconditionally lining up with big business interests
over a long period.
After the defeat, a
sharp struggle broke out over the leadership of the party. Papandreou’s
challenger, V. Venizelos, is even more right-wing than the present party
president. A left wing, which could express the needs of the workers and
broader layers, at least in a classical reformist way, is very unlikely to
appear. The main hope for the future is that parts of the rank and file will
break away from the party.
The Success of
the CPG and of the SYRIZA
For the first time,
the CPG could exploit the crisis of the PASOK to a large extent. It remains the
leading force of the Greek left. It uses a lot of anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist rhetoric. But it does not surpass classic reformist
conceptions like “popular economy” directed to an alliance with small sections
of the bourgeoisie and a “popular front.” It appears, however, as the “most
left-wing” force of the parties represented in the parliament and thus attracts
most of the left-wing protest votes. Always organizing its own protest marches
and refusing any collaboration with other parties or organizations, the CP
cultivates its resolute sectarianism. The policy of its leadership is one of
the most severe obstacles to the success of mobilizations, strikes and movements.
The CP leadership is
deeply nationalist and supports “its own” bourgeoisie in all important issues
of foreign affairs, be it Cyprus or the Aegean sea. Sometimes it does not even
recoil from alliances with extreme right-wing forces. One of the CP deputies,
the independent journalist Liana Kanelli, is a
fanatic supporter of “patriotism” based on religious-orthodox ideas. The party
strives for
The increase of the
other left reformist force, SYRIZA, under the leadership of the SYN and its
president Alavanos was significant too. The SYN
turned after 2000 to the left, participates in various movements and was active
in the European Social Forum that held its successful congress in
The practical
involvement of the SYN in actions and mobilizations is rather cautious and most
of the SYN trade union leaders do not take significant initiatives which could
seriously challenge the passivity and defeatism which is promoted by the
PASOK-dominated bureaucracies. A strong right wing of the party rejects left
activism and any alliance with smaller left radical organizations as a matter
of principle, and supports a “realistic” line. That means alliances with PASOK
on all levels. The SYN leadership is very likely to attempt to take advantage
of the crisis of the PASOK in order to occupy the free space on the left for a
new left reformist project.
The Anticapitalist Left
For several decades,
the Greek extra-parliamentary left has been divided into dozens of
organizations with Maoist, other Stalinist, Trotskyist,
etc. origins. Due to this confusing situation and to a strong need for
recognition of the various “leaderships,” it continues to have difficulties to
build a socially rooted, alternative pole, although its activists play an
important role in all social and political conflicts. In the municipal
elections of 2006, for the first time in many years, alliances of the radical
left won quite good results, 1–2% in some suburbs of
The SEK, affiliated
to the British SWP (and the IST, the “International Socialist Tendency,” founded
by Tony Cliff and his co-thinkers) and known until a few months ago for its
peculiar sectarianism, took an important initiative and approached, among other
organizations, the NAR (“New Left Current,” originating in the CP’s youth organization, that was bureaucratically expelled
by the CP leadership in 1989), one of the other relatively big organizations
which leads the leftist alliance “MERA” (“Front of the Radical Left”). In June,
the SEK, ARAN,
Due to the specific
sectarianism of the NAR and MERA, and despite the fact that a normal person
interested in left politics would have difficulty understanding the differences
between MERA and ENANTIA, it was not possible to create a common list of the
two anticapitalist alliances. The election results
remained low. It is obvious that the dominance of the reformist left could not
be broken in the recent period. But a more skillful and flexible policy,
orientated towards unity in action, can contribute decisively to gathering the
leading activists of the workers’ and other social movements, towards creating
an anticapitalist pole of attraction. Such a
political project can be successful in the coming period if broader layers of
workers, youth, women and immigrants start acting in the spirit of a united
front against the plans of government and Capital.
Prospects
There is no doubt
about the intentions of the old-new government. The reactionary counterreforms of the pension scheme, which means a more
coordinated regulation of it downwards, the increase of the pensionable
age, the selling or the closure of Olympic Airways, the erosion of permanent
employment in the public sector, more privatizations, particularly of the
telephone company OTE and the electricity company DEI, are on the agenda. That
is precisely what Loulis, the president of the
employers’ association SEV, expressed in his congratulatory letter to
Karamanlis upon his re-election. The coming months will show how the parties
and organizations of the left, the trade unions and the workers’ movement,
confront the expected wave of attacks being prepared and launched by the
government and big business.
Table of the most
important results (in percent):
|
|
2004 |
2007 |
|
ND (New Democracy
— main bourgeois party) |
45.4 |
41.8 (152 seats) |
|
PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement — social democratic) |
40.6 |
38.1 (102) |
|
CPG (Greek
Communist Party) |
5.9 |
8.2 (22) |
|
SYRIZA ( |
3.3 |
5.04 (14) |
|
|
2.2 |
3.8 (10) |
|
Green Ecologists |
1.1 |
(–) |
|
CPG-ML (Maoists) |
0.15 |
0.24 (–) |
|
ML-CPG (Maoists) |
0.07 |
0.11 (–) |
|
MERA (“Front of
the Radical Left,” |
0.15 |
0.17 (–) |
|
ENANTIA (“United Anticapitalist Left,” |
– |
0.15 (–) |
—
Andreas Kloke, OKDE-Spartakos
— Oct. 2007