Greeks Voting for Respite From Hardship Fear More of the Same

As Greeks prepare to return to the polls this weekend, hope the election will lead to a break from their six-year economic crisis has turned into fear that the result will just deliver more of the same.

Kiki Kondyli, an Athens store owner, was formerly an enthusiastic supporter of Alexis Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza. She says she won’t support the party this time because of the former prime minister’s U-turn on opposing spending cuts and tax increases to meet the demands of the nation’s creditors. In fact, she may not bother to vote at all.

“All the politicians need to change; they are all the same in the end,” Kondyli, 47, said on Friday in her outlet selling arts and crafts within view of the Acropolis hill. “We have gotten tired of the situation.”

Such weariness is a common theme in Athens as the capital gears up for what’s now a grindingly familiar ritual: Sunday’s vote will be Greece’s sixth national election in as many years, including this summer’s surprise referendum on the conditions for a third European bailout.

Former Hero

In the central Syntagma Square, workers on Friday were assembling the temporary stage for a planned evening rally by Syriza. Politicians from other European anti-austerity parties, including Pablo Iglesias of Spain’s Podemos and Gregor Gysi of Germany’s Left party, will appear alongside Tsipras, 41, who was hailed as a hero by other left-wingers when he first took power.

Just across the street, the New Democracy party, unseated by Syriza in a January election, constructed a large kiosk where volunteers offered pamphlets between blown-up photos of leader Evangelos Meimarakis, 61. On loudspeakers, slogans played on a repeating loop. Meimarakis is campaigning on a platform of stability, drawing on New Democracy’s pedigree as a frequent party in government since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974.

“There’s great insecurity and there are no clear choices,” said Kelly Boza, 23, who works in a café in the city center. She said that many of her friends have joined the exodus of young Greeks leaving for other European countries or further afield in search of economic opportunity.

Syriza has a wafer-thin lead over New Democracy in the polls. Both parties say they will support the terms of the bailout deal that Tsipras struck in July with European creditors. In exchange for 86 billion euros ($98 billion) of emergency aid, Greeks must submit to further sharp budget cuts and tax rises, measures that led to a split within Syriza in August and triggered new elections.

Coalition Question

Where things get more complicated is what the next governing coalition might look like. It’s likely neither Syriza nor New Democracy will win an outright majority in the 300-seat parliament, giving significant influence to smaller parties and opening the door to further political turmoil.

With both major parties pledging to implement the bailout agreement, “the election is an opportunity to gain some stability,” Diego Iscaro, an economist at research firm IHS Inc., said by e-mail. 

Still, if the winner can’t achieve a governing majority either alone or with smaller parties, “a Syriza or ND-led minority government would be short-lived,” potentially requiring yet another election this year if it loses the confidence of parliament, Iscaro said.

Greeks will vote in relatively benign circumstances compared with those before the July referendum. Then, banks were shut because of capital controls imposed by Tsipras’s government after bailout talks broke down, bringing business to a crawl and leaving people worried about whether their savings would be seized to shore up lenders. European leaders, including the usually more dovish European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, had begun to talk openly about Greece having to exit from the euro area.

Market Support

Commerce is returning, pensions are being paid, and Greeks needn’t worry about losing the funds in their bank accounts. Their country’s membership of the single currency is secure, for now at least, and financial markets are even beginning to signal that investors would prefer Tsipras return to Maximos, the official residence of Greece’s prime minister.

Greek government bonds have posted the biggest returns in the euro area over the past month and the country’s stock market is also rallying.

All that’s been little consolation to people like Stefanos Tsoutsanis. The 52-year-old Athenian says he’s unsure whether he’ll vote on Sunday because Greece’s international creditors have “predetermined” the country’s policies and left its people with “no hope.”

If he does cast a ballot, Tsoutsanis said it would be for Tsipras, who he believes has a better chance of improving life for future generations. “He’s young and deserves to win again,” said Tsoutsanis, who was standing in for an acquaintance at a sidewalk stand in central Athens with Greek bread rings for sale. “Something might change for the kids.”

Unmasked Campaigns

Party leaders are just about out of chances to make their arguments to voters. In accordance with Greek electoral law, official campaigning must halt by midnight Friday, making Syriza’s Syntagma Square rally the last major public event before the polls open at 7 a.m. Sunday. They’ll close at 7 p.m., with exit polls expected immediately.

Kondyli, the Athens craft store owner, said she has gone to pre-election events put on by most of the main parties in the past week and got bored by their similarity.

“They should all wear the same mask on the stage like in ancient Greece,” she said.