Refugees add wild card to Greek election

Refugees add wild card to Greek election

By HELEN POPPER 9/18/15, 5:30 AM CET http://www.politico.eu/article/refugees-wild-card-greek-election-tsipras-syriza-polls/

ATHENS – Children’s clothes hang drying on the railings, rucksacks are heaped against trees and a few tents have appeared in Victoria Square, a downtown plaza in Athens that is home to dozens of migrants and refugees.

As Greeks prepare to vote in a snap election on Sunday, the arrival of thousands of migrants every day over the summer months has become one of the few issues to produce sparks during a low-profile campaign pitting leftist former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras against veteran conservative lawmaker Vangelis Meimarakis.

With polls showing a tight race, New Democracy accused Tsipras’s government this week of “drowning central Athens (Victoria Square) with illegal immigrants” and being partly responsible for the migration crisis that is straining over-stretched public services in the cash-strapped nation.

While most Greeks are sympathetic to refugees fleeing war and violence in their homelands, many right-leaning voters are angry or concerned about the influx and think Tsipras mismanaged the issue during his seven months in power.

“Tsipras is responsible for bringing them here,” said Vangelis Remassouras, a 50-year-old employee at a building overlooking Victoria Square, where bottles of water were being handed out to families and groups of young men sitting in the shade on Thursday.

“He said ‘we’ll give you papers,’ he dismissed border guards, released people from a holding center for migrants that kept them clean and well-fed and now they’re wandering around the islands and the squares in Athens.”

“It’s not good for them either but you can’t bring them here and just leave them to the mercy of God and not care for the Greeks too,” he added, suggesting the far-right, anti-immigration party Golden Dawn might pick up extra votes on Sunday due to the situation.

One in 10 undecided

Golden Dawn, which vows to expel what it terms “illegal immigrants,” is running third in most opinion polls with 6-7 percent, similar to its showing in January.

Migration featured heavily in two televised election debates during which Tsipras defended his record, saying he paved the way for new measures taken by the interim government.

Remassouras is among the roughly 10 percent of Greeks who are undecided about how to vote in Sunday’s election, which was triggered by Tsipras’s resignation. A revolt by left-wing members of his Syriza party over the country’s third multi-billion euro bailout stripped Tsipras of his parliamentary majority.

But what looked like an easy reelection bid has become a surprisingly tight race, making another coalition government almost certain. That has raised the specter of fresh political instability and questions over how effectively the next government will implement the structural reforms and budget cuts demanded by the bailout.

Golden Dawn, which vows to expel what it terms “illegal immigrants,” is running third in most opinion polls.

Tsipras, 41, elected on pledges to roll back bailout-linked austerity, was forced to rely on support from pro-European parties including New Democracy to pass the three-year financing program.

That dismayed many Syriza supporters and has also limited Meimarakis’s scope to criticize the bailout terms. He has focused instead on questioning Tsipras’s handling of thorny issues including the migration crisis and negotiations with Greece’s international creditors.

Many voters on the left are also in a quandary as the two front-runners wind up their campaigns with rallies ahead of Sunday’s vote.

For the people who swept Tsipras to power on a wave of hope, his failure to wring a better bailout deal out of creditors was a bitter disappointment and his approval ratings have plunged.

Over the edge

Political analysts say turnout among former Syriza voters could prove decisive for Tsipras’s re-election hopes, particularly among younger voters.

“For us, the working-class people, Syriza is the only option” — Christophoratos Dimitris, pensioner.

Student Petros Stavropoulos, 22, said he was still wavering.

“What with everything that’s happened, I’m not sure yet. At one stage, I thought I might not bother but not voting doesn’t help the situation,” he said, standing in the midday sun besides Victoria Square’s bustling pavement cafes.

“I saw how things turned out and I don’t think it makes much difference whether it’s a left- or right-wing government,” he added.

Tsipras loyalists disagree and have sought to play up the differences between “the old political system” they say New Democracy represents and Syriza, a newcomer relatively unscathed by corruption scandals.

“We already know the others. We’ve tried all the others. They pushed Greece over the edge of the cliff. For us, the working-class people, Syriza is the only option,” said Christophoratos Dimitris, 74, a pensioner manning a Syriza campaign stand outside a subway station in Athens.

Campaigning has lacked the grassroots fervor of previous elections and only one or two elderly shoppers stopped to pick up leaflets from Dimitris’s stand.

For many ordinary Greeks and foreign investors, which party triumphs on Sunday is less important than the coalition talks that will almost certainly follow. Center-left Pasok and centrist To Potami are seen as the most likely coalition parties for either Syriza or New Democracy.

“Still, it is unclear whether a SYRIZA-Pasok-Potami or a New Democracy-Pasok-Potami coalition could secure a clear majority in parliament,” Wolfango Piccoli, managing director at Teneo Intelligence, wrote in a briefing note this week, predicting further tension within Syriza after the vote.

“Tsipras’s priority will be to keep his party together, not to implement the terms of the bailout.