The Changing Tide in Greek and European Politics

Just back from the shelter, and, with 1% of the vote still to be checked and allocated, looking at the good news that

– ND/PASOK DO NOT HAVE A MAJORITY. They are combined at 149 seats, 2 short of the majority they need.

– SYRIZA has managed to out perform PASOK (iow took a load of PASOK votes), and if you take out the 50 seat bonus that ND has as the bigest party, SYRIZA is 6 seats short of being the biggest party. If this goes to a second vote, all indications are that there will be another shift towards SYRIZA which would most likely make them the biggest party. Merkel better order a truckload of Panadol!

– New Dawn is stuck on 21 seats, which is a blight on Greece and 21 seats to many. What it has done however is given the normal thinking people in Greece a serious fright and there is now a very strong, united anti fascist consensus in the country and within the pother political parties, exclusing LAOS, who have been all but wiped. If this goes to a second round of voting, New Dawn will probably find it’s support seriously reduced. Unfortunately, that would mean more votes for ND.

– The only possible options for a ND/PASOK and 3rd party government are for ND/PASOK to go with either Independent Greeks (fairly right wing) or Democratic Left (a little bit left wing). IG is probably a non starter as Samaras and Kammenos could drink each others blood. Kammenos is on record stating that “Not even dead I would cooperate with ND.” Of course, a juicy Ministry portfolio might just trigger the Lazarus effect…

– Kouvelis is pro European, but most definitely anti austerity and has in his program the strict condition that any government his party would partake in would have to have the release from the Memorandum of Understanding as it’s first and only priority.

– Venizelos is licking his many wounds, after all he is the party leader who lost the birthplace of PASOK (Athens B) to SYRIZA with a resounding thumping. He is now advocating a “unity government” under the stewardship of PASOK, and becasue he believes he was the chief [STRIKE]sheep[/STRIKE] negotiator for the Memorandum of Understanding, he must of course be at the helm of such a government. Dream on Evangelos.

– Unless Samaras has a serious change of mind and lets Venizelos take the helm in a coalition government, the only option would be to go with New Dawn. And power hungry as they are, I don’t think either one of them is mad enough to contemplate that scenario. But then, this is Greece, you never know.

We are heading for a second round….

Meanwhile, the growling and snarling within the EU and IMF is getting louder by the minute.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120506-701359.html

But we only add (majorly I admit) to the headaches in Europe, together with the resignation of Junckers, the French Presidential Elections and the regional elections in Germany itself and to the demise of the German stranglehold on the EU.

After all this we might actually just end up with a EUROPEAN UNION instead of a GREATER GERMANY masquerading as a European Union.

Ephilant  7 May 2012

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