According to the latest news, voting has begun in Greece’s general election, with opinion polls indicating a tight race between the left-wing incumbent Syriza party and the conservative New Democracy.
The ‘snap’ election, Greece’s fifth in six years, was called after Syriza lost its parliamentary majority in August. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras’s popularity plummeted after he agreed a new bailout deal with European leaders. The bailout involved austerity measures which Syriza had vowed to oppose.
Greece is mired in a deep financial crisis and whoever wins Sunday’s election will have to oversee further tough economic reforms. BBC’s Richard Galpin in Athens says whichever party wins is unlikely to get enough seats to form a government alone. That could also mean a period of political instability just as deadlines loom for the implementation of a series of key financial reforms, he adds.
Most opinion polls indicate the conservative party New Democracy and Syriza are running very close. But unlike last January’s election, there is little excitement about Sunday’s vote; campaigning has been lacklustre and the response of the electorate muted.
Syriza’s high noon has passed, the party and its leader bruised by their experience in government. Tsipras’s decision to abandon the anti-austerity stance which had propelled him into government, and instead sign a bailout deal with Greece’s European creditors, fractured Syriza, with 25 MPs setting up their own parliamentary party’s. Tsipras signed the bailout deal shortly after a referendum in which more than 60% of voters rejected the austerity measures creditors wanted to impose.
In interviews leading up to the election, Tsipras said he had put his country above his party. He said that had he not agreed to the three-year bailout, Greece would probably have had to leave the eurozone.
Source: BBC
