Syriza, the radical leftists who have pledged to roll back austerity and push to cut the country’s mammoth debt burden, have emerged as comfortable winners of the Greek elections, early exit polls suggest. Minutes after polling stations closed at 7pm (5pm GMT) on Sunday, the first exit polls – considered reliable indicators, but frequently out by several points – put Alexis Tsipras’s party at 36-39% of the vote, between 10 and 12 points clear of the rival incumbent conservatives of New Democracy. The projections suggest Syriza, which would collect a 50-seat bonus for finishing first, could end up with 158 MPs, an outright majority. But the party could also fall just short of the 151 it needs to govern alone: the final percentage of the vote a winning party needs for a majority depends on the share taken by the smaller parties that score below the 3% threshold needed to enter parliament. The polls suggested seven or eight parties would make it into the new parliament, with the new centrist To Potami party and far-right Golden Dawn apparently locked in a neck-and-neck race for third place between with 6.4% and 8% of the vote respectively. More accurate results are expected later in the evening. “This is a historic victory, but we still have to see if it will be a big historic victory,” Syriza spokesman Panos Skourletis said on Mega TV. “It sends a message against austerity and in favour of dignity and democracy,” he said. After five brutal years of austerity and recession, Greece’s 9.8m voters went to the polls under clear skies in a high-stakes vote that risked putting their country on a collision course with the European Union. Looking confident and relaxed, Alexis Tsipras, the 40-year-old Syriza leader who has promised to light an “anti-austerity” fire across Europe, strode smiling up the steps of a primary school in the Kipseli neighbourhood of Athens to cast his vote. Surrounded by a throng of reporters and chanting supporters, Tsipras declared election day to be the “last step of the Greek people towards … the return of hope, the end of fear, the return of dignity in our country”. Europe’s future was “not the future of austerity – it is the future of democracy, solidarity and cooperation,” he said, adding that a strong vote for Syriza would ensureGreece negotiated “a tough bargain” with Europe. Voters in Kipseli said the election felt like the most important in Greece’s recent history. “I just voted for the party that’s going to change Greece – in fact, the party that is going to change the whole of Europe,” said Panagiotis, 54, a self-employed electrician. “There has to be change, big change. The economy has collapsed. Poverty has reached proportions … People, ordinary people like you and me, are poking around in dustbins to get food to eat. The young can only find work abroad. Syriza is Greece’s hope.” Phoebe Greenwood talks to Greeks before a high-stakes election in the country. Maria, 78, a lifelong conservative, said she had voted Syriza for the first time because she had “no confidence left in anyone, any party, who has governed us up until now”. She added: “Things are in a very bad way here. But at least Syriza seem to care. My grandson – he’s seven – said to his mother, just now: ‘Vote Tsipras, mummy. He talks about the poor people.’” Dimitra, a 32-year-old bank employee who declined to say for whom she had voted, said something “huge” plainly had to happen in her country. “So much has fallen apart, just stopped working. People are really suffering. But I worry expectations are too high today – no one can fix it alone. The truth is, all of us will have to make it happen.” Tsipras’s fierce anti-austerity, anti-bailout message has found an enthusiastic audience across a now visibly strung-out and worn-down country. Since 2009, Greece’s GDP has plummeted by a quarter, its household income by more than a third, and joblessness has trebled, to 26%. Swingeing spending cuts and soaring unemployment have seen about 3.1 million people, or a third of the population, lose their social security and health insurance, leaving the country on the brink of humanitarian crisis. Almost a third of Greece’s population now lives below the poverty line, while 18% are unable to afford basic food needs. The Syriza party’s poster reads ‘the hope is coming’ in an election campaign kiosk in Athens. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis /AFP/Getty Images “For us, hope is not just a campaign slogan,” said Gabriel Sakellaridis, a young Syriza candidate in central Athens. “Hope has been missing from the Greek people through five years of fear, anxiety, despair. Syriza has convinced them we not just that we want to change this, but that we can.” The prospect of a Syriza victory has spooked creditors who worry that Athens will seek a write-off of at least part of its €320bn (£240bn) debt. Some analysts fear that a tough Syriza approach to negotiations could push Greece out of the eurozone, although Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted on Friday that this was not what she wanted. Tsipras’s line has softened markedly in recent weeks, but several EU capitals are still alarmed by promises to cancel the most draconian budget cuts imposed as part of the country’s €240bn bailout package. “We will start with the things we can easily do, that we can afford, but will make a difference,” said Sakellaridis. “We don’t have a magic wand; people know that. But we can take simple steps to restore some social justice: raise the minimum wage and pension, abolish the most unfair new taxes.” If the party does need a coalition partner, its choices are limited. The extreme-right, anti-immigrant, Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn, several of whose 18 MPs are in jail awaiting trial for membership of a criminal organisation, is clearly not an option. The Communist party has refused all cooperation with Syriza. Possible allies could include To Potami, which wants root-and-branch reform of Greece’s dysfunctional state, or the populist Independent Greeks, who agree with Syriza that austerity has to end, but disagree on almost everything else.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 22:18:39 +0000
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