In Greece, this Sunday, May 21, voters are called to the polls for the legislative elections. The electoral campaign ended this Friday evening at midnight. The election sees in particular opposing, on the right, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, outgoing Prime Minister candidate for his re-election, and on the left his predecessor, Alexis Tsipras. A few days before the verdict, partisan electoral kiosks have invaded the cities of the country and are offering programs, leaflets and information on how to vote. Report in the center of Athens in the kiosks of the two main Greek political parties.
With our correspondent in Athens, Joel Bronner
For the two main parties in the struggle for power in Greece, it was a question of giving the impression of power, in the home 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 coalition of the left.
On Syntagma Square stands the ephemeral kiosk of the conservative New Democracy party, vying for re-election. Speech by the outgoing Prime Minister in the background, Giorgos Papageorgiou, the official, calls on voters to choose “ stability “. ” Financially, our party has done, I think, very well, he says. It brought a lot of investments from big foreign groups in Greece. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had promised it and he 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. »
>> To listen also: Greece at the time of the legislative elections
Towards a coalition?
Panepistimiou metro station, Syriza kiosk. Galvanized by the meeting of Alexis Tsipras, 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 simple proportional legislative elections. The objective was precisely to promote a coalition of left-wing progressive forces at the head of the state. »
But before speculating on a possible coalition, we remind New Democracy – the favorite -, we must first wait for the results of Sunday’s vote.
>> To read also: Legislative 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 can be used mathematically would be to find an agreement with the third party, which will surely be the Pasok, the socialist party. We can’t know, but with something close, let’s say that he may be able, and he dreams of it I suppose, to obtain a real majority. But Pasok is a sick socialist party and at the same time Pasok does not want to be eaten, if I may say so, by Syriza, so I am afraid that if it joins forces with one of the two, it’s not really out of ideology, but rather for the joy of having a few ministerial posts.
Listen to the decryption of Joëlle Dalègre, specialist in contemporary Greece and lecturer at INALCO
♦ The outgoing Prime Minister has a positive economic record for him, but can that be enough to convince voters?
A priori not, believes Joëlle Dalègre: ” His problem is that the balance sheet is very good, seen through the eyes of the IMF, of Europe, of the Fitch agency, but that seen by the experience of the average inhabitant, the average inhabitant sees nothing better, he even sees only things that are getting worse. All the polls, they can be wrong, seem to say that he would come out of the case first, it is true that a good part of the media is totally controlled by Mitsotakis, the family, the ruling party, etc. . And at the same time, there are still a large number of abstainers and many people who say they are not decided; precisely because they have been told for 15 years to wait for their situation 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, if 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 it is a factor of disillusion which adds to the uncertainty of the ballot.
” Unemployment is a little lower than ten years ago, but still, it still remains, for young people in particular, the highest in Europeanalyzes 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 are now almost guaranteed not to return. There are already very few young people in Greece, but in addition it has lost almost all of its young graduates in the past ten years, so that is why there is both a kind of fury against politicians who do not 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 to say having strictly no more hope. It may also explain why eventually people say they hesitate, it will end up being a vote, “I don’t choose one or the other, I vote against the other”. »