Support at record high for Greece's radical-left party

ONE WEEK into the campaign for the second Greek general election, to be held on June 17th, a poll shows the country’s main anti-bailout leftist party has overtaken its principal promemorandum conservative rival.

Support for the Radical Left Coalition (Syriza), led by Alexis Tsipras, is now at 30 per cent, an all-time high and a solid four points ahead of New Democracy, according to the Public Issue/ Kathimerini poll, which was published late on Thursday.

Growth in support for the two main parties has been at the expense of the plethora of parties that failed to make the parliamentary threshold in the inconclusive May 6th contest and reflects the increasing polarisation around the memorandum issue.

Translated into seats, Syriza’s showing could give it 126 of 300 MPs in the parliament, thanks to the 50-seat bonus awarded to the first party. But this would leave it well short of an overall majority and would require it to enter a coalition with at least three other parties if it is to take power.

Pasok, the socialist party that negotiated the country’s two bailout memoranda, remains in third place, at 15.5 per cent, with the other five parties likely to enter parliament each polling below 10 per cent.

Yesterday, one former Pasok minister sounded out the idea of a three-way coalition involving Syriza, her party and the moderate Democratic Left as one possible government scenario.

“I don’t agree with the demonisation of Syriza,” former European commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou told state-run Net radio. “I think that we need to judge their proposals and the people will judge them.”

But pollsters say it is too early to predict who will emerge victorious from this election. New Democracy is certain to ratchet up its intense criticism of what it says is the recklessness of Syriza’s approach at home and abroad.

“This is no longer a case of naivety or his lack of experience,” New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras told a private television station, referring specifically to Mr Tsipras. “[His actions] are dangerous for the country because at the time that we are building alliances, he is tearing them down.”

Mr Samaras’s comments followed Mr Tsipras’s return from a much publicised tour of Paris and Berlin. The Syriza leader came in for intense criticism in Athens for his remarks in Paris that the new president risked turning into “Hollandreou” – a French version of former Greek premier George Papandreou – if he reneged on election promises.

Syriza, however, said the visit fulfilled its goal which was to appeal to German and French public opinion that there are alternatives to “austerity programmes which create unemployment and poverty”.

“We’re against the memorandum and the austerity which it imposes on Greek society, not because these policies are destroying people’s lives here but because they are destroying the European social model,” said Rena Dourou, a newly elected MP with the party.

Mr Samaras will today launch the party’s election platform, centred on the idea of a “European patriotic front”.

His attempts to rally the right around the issue of the memorandum produced significant results during the week when Dora Bakoyannis, a rival he expelled for voting for the first memorandum in 2010, announced she was “suspending” her breakaway liberal Democratic Alliance and returning to the New Democracy fold.

In another coup, Mr Samaras also picked up a number of former MPs from the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (Laos).

In an effort to claw back some of the support lost to Syriza – and sensing a change in direction following the election of François Hollande – New Democracy and Pasok have increased calls for aspects of the memorandum to be changed in order to help Greece meet its commitments.