A follow-up from Saturday’s post:
Imagine America in 1932, in the ravages of the Great Depressions, and worsening each and every day, due in large part to the bankrupt policies of Herbert Hoover and the republican party. Imagine the 1932 elections, and Americans re-electing Hoover and republican leadership. This is, essentially, what has just occurred in Greece.
With all of the votes now counted, the ultra-right wing party of European banking interests, whose middle name is “Austerity”, the New Democracy Party, received 29.7% of the vote, ahead of the progressive Syriza Party’s 26.9%. The New Democracy Party appears able to build a ruling coalition, excluding the Syrizas, by including the far left PASOK party in its cartel of power-hungry eurozoneaphiles.
The good news is, however, that Syriza’s second-place showing establishes them and party leader Alexis Tsipras as legitimate populist opposition, with an expanding power base (The party received only 4.7% of the vote in 2009).
Whether or not a viable coalition that can actually rule is possible, whether or not yet another bailout will be available, and whether or not New Democracy head man Antonis Samaras can rise to an effective leadership role after years of very limited success in a variety of positions in Greek government and with his own failed party, which was actually to the right of the New Democracy group, are all dubious factors in the battle Greek citizens will be facing in their fight to regain economic stability and a return to normalcy in their lives.
I don’t think it will work and that a third round of elections will in in Greece’s near future, with, finally, a different outcome.
