Major fall in support for largest parties

ON THE first day into the campaign for the Greek national elections, an opinion poll said the two largest parties could count on the support of just one in four voters.

Yesterday’s Metron Analysis poll, published in the Imersia newspaper, said the combined support for centre-right New Democracy (16.5 per cent) and centre-left Pasok (10.4 per cent) would not be enough for the parties to continue their coalition after the May 6th elections, even if they wished.

It was the second poll in as many days that showed both parties, which have dominated politics since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, are well below the minimum 36 per cent necessary to form a government.

In an interview yesterday, the New Democracy leader, Antonis Samaras, reiterated his position that fresh elections would be unavoidable if the May 6th poll failed to produce an overall winner.

He stressed that it would be “blackmail to force a political party that has won the elections to govern together with those who have lost,” referring to Pasok.

The fact that the other seven parties likely to take seats in the new parliament either reject outright the bailout agreements or call for them to be fundamentally reworked would greatly frustrate any effort to build a new coalition.

These parties range from the Stalinist Communist party to the neofascist Golden Dawn party.

But the leader of one party hitherto considered as a potential coalition partner poured cold water yesterday on the suggestion he could share power with the two big parties.

“New Democracy and Pasok opted to defend the policies they have implemented, so based on our political position we cannot discuss a coalition with them,” said Fotis Kouvelis of the Democratic Left.

As the calling of elections was widely anticipated, the arrest of a former Pasok minister for money laundering dominated the morning headlines.

“The submarines, the golden kickbacks, and the background,” read Ta Nea’s headline on the arrest on Wednesday morning of Akis Tsochatzopoulos.

A close associate of Pasok founder Andreas Papandreou, he has been charged with money laundering in a case revolving around an alleged €8 million kickback he received in a government purchase of submarines and missile systems from a German company.

But the petty electioneering and the late arrest in a case that has dragged on for almost two years will be of little concern to the record numbers of Greeks out of work.

The country’ statistical arm said yesterday that unemployment in January had hit a record 21.8 per cent, with young people 24 or under the hardest hit.

The election campaign is likely to begin in earnest after Easter, which is celebrated this weekend in the predominantly Orthodox country.