Greek Elections Fuel Fears Of 'Social Explosion'

Greek Elections Fuel Fears Of 'Social Explosion':

'via Blog this'

ATHENS, June 18 (Reuters) - Pro-bailout party New Democracy may have come first in Sunday's Greek election but the radical left anti-austerity SYRIZA bloc was celebrating like the real winner well into the warm Athens night.

The election exposed a struggling nation deeply divided over whether to implement a harsh austerity package, the price for receiving a total of 240 billion euros in bailout money from the European Union and IMF to save its near-bankrupt economy.

"My biggest fear is of a social explosion," said a senior adviser to the country's likely next prime minister, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras.

"If there is no change in the policy mix, we're going to have a social explosion even if you bring Jesus Christ to govern this country."

According to official figures with 99.9 percent of the votes counted, Samaras's conservative New Democracy party won just 29.7 percent of the vote, only 2.7 percentage points more than SYRIZA, which almost doubled its support from the previous election held on May 6.

When the votes for Greece's other anti-bailout parties, ranging from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn to the Marxist-Leninist KKE, are added to SYRIZA's tally, up to 52 percent of Greeks cast ballots against the terms of the international deal.

New Democracy supporters had initially slumped despairing in their seats at the party's plush new headquarters as exit polls showed less than half a percentage point separating them from SYRIZA, only to cheer up as official results showing a better performance trickled in.

Even then, celebrations were muted. "What is there for us to celebrate ?" a member of Samaras's inner circle said. "Our country is in such a deep crisis."

The streets of central Athens are scarred with repeated waves of protests, some hospitals are running short of vital medicines, thousands of businesses have closed, beggars and rough sleepers are multiplying and suicides are rising.

New Democracy's Samaras now faces the awkward task of convincing the centre-left PASOK movement to join a coalition charged with implementing highly unpopular spending cuts and privatisations, while the economy nosedives.

Under the terms of the international bailout, the new government must fire up to 150,000 civil servants, slash spending by 11 billion euros this month, sell off a swathe of state-owned companies, improve tax collection and open closed professions to competition.

Once Greece's ruling party, PASOK's support collapsed to just 12.3 percent in Sunday's vote, giving the two pro-bailout parties just 40 percent of the popular vote, not a strong mandate for austerity.

A PASOK-New Democracy coalition is guaranteed a parliamentary majority thanks to a quirk of Greek electoral law which gives the winning party a bonus of 50 extra seats. But that will not win it the argument on Greece's streets.

The Greek economy is expected to shrink by 5 percent this year after contracting 7 percent last year and unemployment is running at almost 23 percent. Many economists believe that the harsh austerity measures will only make matters worse in the short term.


Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/greek-elections_n_1604838.html