Hellenic Parliament of Greece -
Photo (Wiki), English: The Hellenic Parliament building in Athens.
5 February 2007, (originally posted to Flickr as Love the clouds over the mountains)
Author: @ Gerard McGovern -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hellenic_Parliament_from_high_above.jpg
Ioanna is unemployed and was outside the unemployment office. She said, “I didn’t vote because there was no real choice in this election.” Speaking about ND’s [New Democracy] victory she said, “If the people wouldn’t have elected this government they would have thrown Greece out of the euro zone.” Katerina, a 27 year old Spanish teacher said, “The media played a crucial role [in the result] by creating this fear.”
The WSWS state, “In reality, ND has no popular mandate in which to carry out its onslaught on behalf of the Troika—the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB).”
The central points about the Greek election are as follows:
* Finishing in first place with 29.66% (less than 3% ahead of the second place SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), ND was able to secure an extra 50 seats. ND won a total of 1.8 million votes, up from 1.2 million in the May general election, while SYRIZA’s vote rose to 1.7 million from 1.1 million.
* SYRIZA won the most votes among working class voters nationally, on the basis of their criticism of the austerity agendas of ND and PASOK.
* The election saw a record low turnout. Just 62.4 percent of registered voters turned out, down from 65.1 percent at the May 6 election. The 37.53% of people who didn’t vote is significantly higher than the vote obtained by any single party.
WSWS – “In a number of prefectures the turnouts were well below national average, with Florina at 61 percent, Kefalonia 56.78 percent, Lakonia 55.89 percent, Evrytania 53.65 percent and Lesvos 54.43 percent. The low turnout was also reflected in the turnout in the Athens “B” area, with its 1.4 million registered voters living in mainly working class districts. Although at 70 percent it was higher than the national average, this was down from 73.4 percent in the May election.”
One factor in the low turnout is directly linked to the mass poverty that has engulfed Greece. During the last week WSWS reporters have been told by many people that they would not be voting as they could not afford the travel costs from Athens to return to their ancestral home towns and villages where they are registered to vote, as is required by law.
The central feature of the election campaign echoed the threats of the EU, that credit to Greece would be terminated if the result threatened the austerity measures already agreed in the last 110 billion euro loan to Greece.
Read the Rest of this At:
Athens workers and youth discuss Greek election result, by Robert Stevens, World Socialist Website, 19th June 2012 – http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/gree-j19.shtml