By Marcus Bensasson
and Nikos Chrysoloras
Syriza's party
supporters wave flags during a speech of the party's leader Alexis Tsipras,
after the results of the European elections, outside the Athens University, on
May 25, 2014.
Greece’s main opposition Syriza party placed
first in elections to the European Parliament without winning by a big enough
margin to destabilize Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s government.
“In the short run there is no problem of
government stability,” Dimitris Sotiropoulos, associate professor of political
science at the University of Athens, said in a phone interview. “While both
governing parties have lost several percentage points each, their combined
popular support is above the popular support of the main opposition.”
Greek bonds rose today after Syriza, short
in Greek for Coalition of the Radical Left, got 26.6 percent of the vote in
yesterday’s election, compared with 22.7 percent for Samaras’s New Democracy,
according to a count of 98.4 percent of ballots posted on the Interior Ministry
website. Samaras’s junior coalition partner, Pasok, running as the Elia
alliance, took 8 percent.
The European vote, together with Greek local
and regional elections, was seen as a test of the ruling coalition’s stability.
While Samaras has presided over Greece’s return to capital markets, the effects
of the debt crisis and a six-year recession remain visible in a country where
more than half of young people are out of work.
Translated into seats in the European
Parliament, Syriza gets six lawmakers, New Democracy five and Elia two. Syriza’s
leader, Alexis Tsipras, said in a televised statement early today that the
party’s win sent a clear message against the budget-cutting austerity measures
tied to Greece’s 240 billion euro ($327 billion) bailout from the euro area and
International Monetary Fund, and called for immediate national elections.
“It’s the first time in Greece’s political
history that a party of the radical left wins an election with a real margin,”
Panagiotis Lafazanis, a Syriza lawmaker, said in a telephone interview. “The
result of the Greek election brings hope to the country and is positive for
Europe.”
The nationalist Golden Dawn party, whose
leader and five other lawmakers are in prison pending trial on charges of
running a criminal organization, jumped to third place, with 9.4 percent of the
vote, from a fifth- place showing in general elections in 2012. The result
gives them three seats.
“The rise of Golden Dawn is the most
alarming result of this elections,” Christos Dimas, a lawmaker for New
Democracy, said in a phone interview. “This time it was a conscious vote for
the extremists. Voters could not say they didn’t know what Golden Dawn stands
for.”
To Potami, a new party, placed fifth with
6.6 percent, or two seats, followed by the Communist Party with 6.1 percent,
which also gives them two EU lawmakers. In local elections, New Democracy-backed
candidates won governorships in seven of the country’s regions, with Syriza
winning in two, including the Attica metropolitan region that includes Athens.
Independent candidates took four governorships.
In Greece’s two biggest cities, Athens and
Thessaloniki, the incumbent mayors, both independents, were re-elected. The
Communist Party took Patras, the third-biggest city.
(Source: Bloomberg
Business Week)
