Report

Greeks go to the polls for uncertain legislative elections

Audio 01:18

Kyriakos Mitsotakis meets in Athens, in front of the ancient hill of the Acropolis, Friday, May 19, 2023. AP - Thanassis Stavrakis

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

In Greece, this Sunday, May 21, voters are called to ballot for the legislative elections. The electoral campaign ended this Friday evening at midnight. The election notably sees Kyriakos Mitsotakis, outgoing Prime Minister standing for re-election, opposed on the right and his predecessor, Alexis Tsipras, on the left. A few days before the verdict, partisan election kiosks have invaded cities across the country and are offering programs, leaflets and information on voting procedures. Report in the center of Athens in the kiosks of the two main Greek political parties.

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With our correspondent in Athens, Joël Bronner

For the two main parties fighting for power in Greece, it was about giving an impression of power, in the final stretch. Faced with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister from 2015 to 2019, wants to believe that the official polls, which give him the loser, are wrong and that he is close to power, at the head of a left-wing coalition.

On Syntagma Square stands the pop-up kiosk of the conservative New Democracy party, which is running for re-election. Speech by the outgoing Prime Minister in the background, Giorgos Papageorgiou, the leader, calls on voters to choose "stability". "From a financial point of view, our party has, I think, done very well," he says. He brought a lot of investment from large foreign groups to Greece. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised this and he has kept his promises. That's what we tell people: he does what he says and that's why he should stay in power for another 4 years.

>> Also listen: Greece at the time of the general elections

Towards a coalition?

Metro Panepistimiou, Syriza kiosk. Galvanized by Alexis Tsipras' meeting the day before, Achilea Rousiaki wants to believe in his return to power, via a coalition: "Of course there will be a coalition to govern Greece. When it was in power, the Syriza government passed a text to institute parliamentary elections by simple proportional representation. The aim was precisely to favour a coalition of progressive left-wing forces at the head of state. »

But before speculating on a possible coalition, as New Democracy - the favorite - reminds us, we must first wait for the results of Sunday's vote.

>> Read also: Legislative elections in Greece: towards a possible electoral marathon until the summer

♦ Does Alexis Tsipras have the means to return to power?

The match for Syriza is difficult, the party is given second, but the only possible ally would be Pasok, the socialist party and no agreement was in sight on the eve of the election.

He will probably find himself second and not very far behind the first, but second. The only thing that mathematically can serve would be to find an agreement with the third which will surely be Pasok, the socialist party. We cannot know, but let us say that he maybe, and I suppose he dreams of it, get a real majority. But Pasok is a sick socialist party and at the same time Pasok does not want to be eaten, if I dare say, by Syriza, so I fear that if it allies itself with one of the two, it is not really out of ideology, but rather for the joy of having some ministerial posts.

Listen to the decryption of Joëlle Dalègre, specialist in contemporary Greece and lecturer at INALCO

Juliette Gheerbrant

♦ The outgoing Prime Minister has a positive economic record for him, but can this be enough to convince voters?

A priori no, says Joëlle Dalègre: "His problem is that the balance sheet is very good, seen through the eyes of the IMF, Europe, the Fitch agency, but that seen by the experience of the average inhabitant, he the average inhabitant sees nothing better, he even sees things that are getting worse. All the polls, they may be wrong, seem to say that he would come out of the matter first, it is true that a good part of the media are totally controlled by Mitsotákis, the family, the ruling party etc. And at the same time, there are still a large number of abstentionists and many people who declare themselves not decided; Precisely because they have been told for 15 years to wait for their lot to improve, so for everyone, it is still not very convincing.

Disillusioned young people

The country has raised the bar economically, but discontent is brewing, while unemployment has fallen, it remains very high among young people. At least those who remain, because the country has lost a lot of its youth, left to try its luck elsewhere, and this is a factor of disillusionment that adds to the uncertainty of the election.

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Unemployment is a little lower than ten years ago, but finally, it remains still, for young people in particular, the strongest in Europe, analyzes Joëlle Dalègre, specialist in contemporary Greece and lecturer at INALCO at the microphone of Juliette Gheerbrant of RFI's international service. The more than 500,000 young graduates who left in the previous decade, now it is pretty much guaranteed that they will not return. There are already very few young people in Greece, but in addition it has lost almost all its young graduates for ten years, so that's why there is both a kind of fury against politicians who have not been able to improve the functioning of the state, etc., and at the same time a form of despair. The two can go together, in the strict sense of the word despair, that is, have absolutely no hope. It can also explain why finally people say they hesitate, it will end up being a vote, "I do not choose one or the other, I vote against the other". »

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Read on on the same topics:

• Greece
• Alexis Tsipras
• Kyriakos Mitsotakis