#1
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
"Official projections Sunday showed New Democracy winning 18.9 percent, giving it 108 seats in the 300-member parliament — far short of the 151 needed to form a government. The anti-bailout left-wing Syriza party was projected second with 16.8 percent and 51 seats, and the formerly majority socialist PASOK lagged behind with 13.4 and 41 seats.

The extremist far-right Golden Dawn party, which ran on an anti-immigrant platform and wants landmines along Greece's borders, is projected to win 7 percent of the vote, giving it 22 deputies in Parliament — a massive gain for a party that until a few months ago was on the fringes of Greek politics."

KKE (communists) got like 8% of the vote or something and Democratic Left I dunno.

thoughts? musings? bon mots?
#2
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i'm surprised but happy to see syriza doing so well. the last polls i looked at had them well behind ND, though i guess they still are as far as seats go.
#3
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

Lessons posted:

i'm surprised but happy to see syriza doing so well. the last polls i looked at had them well behind ND, though i guess they still are as far as seats go.

you get a 50 seat vote plurality bonus in greece.

#4
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that's stupid, especially if parties are getting less than 20% and have a whopping 2% lead over their closest rivals
#5
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Lessons posted:

that's stupid, especially if parties are getting less than 20% and have a whopping 2% lead over their closest rivals



i haven't looked into at all, but i imagine it was almost certainly put into place to lower the parliamentary influence of the hard left

#6
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It's interesting to note that the Golden Dawn has been filling the vacuum left by police forces that do not do anything and has been providing other kinds of aid. I can see them continuing to grow in the future as things get worse.
#7
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Greece needs to attack Tukey ASAP to restore some sense of cross-partisan national purpose to it's society.

They could invade northern Cyprus and try and pull off what Argentina failed to do with the Malvinas. See if erdogan truly is the Anatolian Thatcher
#8
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Greece needs to attack Tukey ASAP to restore some sense of cross-partisan national purpose to it's society.

They could invade northern Cyprus and try and pull off what Argentina failed to do with the Malvinas. See if erdogan truly is the Anatolian Thatcher



yeah; also germany gotsa do this to greece

#9
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
plurality bonuses are put in place to make stronger coalitions more likely. italy has a rule now that a coalition gets a majority basically just by winning a plurality of the vote, for example, so that they don't have permanent dysfunctional minorities. it does sorta sideline the radical left by encouraging coalitions to build before the election, which makes it hard to guess how powerful the far left is, but whatever.
#10
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i know they're at least anti-bailout, but exactly how left are Syriza? are they actually socialist as opposed to the nominally socialist but actually somewhat capitalist PASOK?
#11
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SYN describes itself as a radical left party, inspired by the ideas of the renewal of the communist and broader left movement in Greece and in Europe. It also fights for the merging of the ecological movement along with the left, to form a strategic alliance. The party's culture has been enriched by its active participation in the movement against the Neoliberal Capitalist Globalization.



at least sounds somewhat promising

#12
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aerdil posted:

i know they're at least anti-bailout, but exactly how left are Syriza? are they actually socialist as opposed to the nominally socialist but actually somewhat capitalist PASOK?



pro/anti-eu is the more important question atm, imo

#13
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
these are the seats with 92% of the vote counted:

New Democracy (conservative/pro-EU) - 109
SYRIZA (far-left) - 51
PASOK (social-democrat/pro-EU) - 41
Independent Greeks (right/anti-EU) - 33
KKE (communist/anti-EU) - 26
Golden Dawn (far-right/anti-EU) - 21
DIMAR (left) - 19

technically ND + PASOK + DIMAR would be enough for a government, but the thinking seems to be that SYRIZA will need to be integrated into the government somehow.
#14
Post rating: +

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Greece needs to attack Tukey ASAP to restore some sense of cross-partisan national purpose to it's society.

They could invade northern Cyprus and try and pull off what Argentina failed to do with the Malvinas. See if erdogan truly is the Anatolian Thatcher



uh more like the EU needs to build their sense of unity by joining hands and working to restore Greece to its proper national borders (Iberia to XinJiang).

#15
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Lykourgos posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Greece needs to attack Tukey ASAP to restore some sense of cross-partisan national purpose to it's society.

They could invade northern Cyprus and try and pull off what Argentina failed to do with the Malvinas. See if erdogan truly is the Anatolian Thatcher

uh more like the EU needs to build their sense of unity by joining hands and working to restore Greece to its proper national borders (Iberia to XinJiang).



*applauds*

#16
Post rating: ~

Lykourgos posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Greece needs to attack Tukey ASAP to restore some sense of cross-partisan national purpose to it's society.

They could invade northern Cyprus and try and pull off what Argentina failed to do with the Malvinas. See if erdogan truly is the Anatolian Thatcher

uh more like the EU needs to build their sense of unity by joining hands and working to restore Greece to its proper national borders (Iberia to XinJiang).



i don't think that Greater Greece will look much like your ideal Greek Empire

#17
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#18
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#19
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Lykourgos posted:

uh more like the EU needs to build their sense of unity by joining hands and working to restore Greece to its proper national borders (Iberia to XinJiang).


Give Greece back to Macedon and be done with it IMO

#20
Mike Nelson here.
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this looks like the final result:

ND 108
SYRIZA 52
PASOK 41
Independent Greeks 33
KKE 26
Golden Dawn 21
DIMAR 19

need 151 for coalition

i think both golden dawn and kke are ruled out of any coalition basically

i think the only way that SYRIZA would get a coalition is if they can convince PASOK to back an anti-bailout plan which seems i dunno.
#21
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#22
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#23
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
well the thing is, PASOK has no legitimacy to form a government on its own right now, so if SYRIZA's coalition falls through (which it will without one of PASOK or ND) there will be another election. so they might say well okay we'd rather see what SYRIZA can come up with before we decide to vote for new elections. this would seem to depend on whether they think a new election would be good for themselves, and more broadly, good for greece.

if i were a PASOK politician and i saw my vote fall by more than half, i might be worried that the next election there won't be much of PASOK left at all, especially if they look obstructionist in the face of an upsurge for the left.
#24
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#25
Mike Nelson here.
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yeah but they might feel a bit weird about taking power after coming in third place, losing most of their vote, and having to lean on a party twice as big as them in the legislature, in order to undo their own old agenda.
#26
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girdles_gone_wild posted:

Lykourgos posted:

uh more like the EU needs to build their sense of unity by joining hands and working to restore Greece to its proper national borders (Iberia to XinJiang).

Give Greece back to Macedon and be done with it IMO



Too late, Macedonia is already in Greece.

Unless you're talking about the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Macedonia" in which case lol.

#27
Mike Nelson here.
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here's mccaine's article about it

The long-awaited results of the elections for the vouli of the Hellenic Republic are in. In all media, the battle was presented as simple two-sided affair: for or against the austerity policies imposed by the Western European creditor governments and supported by the comprador classes in Greece itself. This was further complicated in electoral terms by the plurality bonus law passed in the last pre-crisis session of parliament, which awards the plurality winner a 50 MP bonus over and above their proportion of the vote. This was transparently intended as an arrangement to assure that PASOK or ND, the two dominant parties, would have to share power as little as possible and to guarantee an oligarchic identical two-party rule in the style of the United States, without having to resort entirely to plurality district-based systems. The bons hommes of ND and PASOK did not count on their support ever seriously falling below the level that would guarantee them power in this way, and yet this is what the current crisis of capitalism has achieved. At the final tally, even with the plurality bonus ND+PASOK stand together at 149 seats, just short of the 151 majority; the first time in post-dictatorial history in Greece that the two parties have not even managed a majority together, let alone separately.

The great winner has been SYRIZA, the left coalition led by Alexis Tsipras, which has beaten PASOK to second place quite handily. While the KKE barely profited from the conditions, SYRIZA and the more principled anti-capitalist coalition Antarsya did. SYRIZA is in a very strong position indeed – all the more since ND leader Antonis Samaras has already indicated being unable to form a pro-austerity coalition as formally invited to do. This puts the onus strongly on Tsipras to make the results count in political terms. Yet whether he will be able to do so can be questioned. Firstly, the division of the vote on the left clearly indicates the popularity of the notion of ending austerity without ending the existing relationship between Greece and the European Union, or even the relationship between Greece and NATO and the wider world-system. Tsipras expressly campaigned in favor of keeping the Euro and the commitment to the European Union, something KKE is traditionally against (as are most left-wing parties in Europe). However, a default for Greece, the only non-austerity option, is not likely to be borne without repercussions by the bourgeoisies benefiting from the Eurozone system – first and foremost those of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, secondary those in France and others. They will not be amenable to adjusting the austerity impositions and the deflationary monetary regime embedded in the Eurozone’s ruling agreements just to favor a debtor in bad faith. At the same time, a clause in the new EU treaty – little remarked upon at the time, but now crucial – expressly states that any Eurozone member state that decides to suspend use of the Euro thereby renounces membership of the European Union.

This puts SYRIZA and their fellow thinkers face-to-face with the paradox. To reject austerity is to default; but to default is to break the Eurozone agreement’s constraints. Only if they can diplomatically achieve the suspension or revision of those agreements can they proceed on this basis, in which they may now find a friend in the newly elected François Hollande. The fall of the Dutch government, stubborn as a mule in imposing its hypocritical restrictions on other member states, may also be of help. But I would not count on this possibility too hard, and it is hard to imagine Tsipras does either. The best way to achieve this may well be simply to call Berlin’s bluff – present them with a fait accompli of Greek default, and hope the combined pressure of the possibility of Spanish and Portuguese default and weakening of Merkel’s allies in austerity will do the trick. The only other option is to actually follow the exit to the end, and actually renounce the EU membership, reintroduce the drachma, and devaluate on the basis of a popular front programme for reviving Greek employment and making the Greek upper classes pay for the burden they have imposed on the people while evading their own share of the cost. A broad popular front programme of this kind has a chance of working, if done by a competent government not afraid to act swiftly against capital flight and using this opportunity to act against the oligarchies of PASOK and ND bureaucrats and the mercantile capital still dominant in the Greek economy. Whether Syriza is that government is not at all sure, given its internal divisions between social-democrats and socialists, and its mutual hostility with the KKE.

The great risk is that the result of this impasse is yet more elections. Under no circumstances should Syriza accept this unless at the minimum it was guaranteed the plurality bonus is abolished, so that there will be no more dependency on the rotten husk of the ND leadership. Quick elections on the exact same basis as the current ones cannot but favor the forces of the right. Already, Chrysi Avyi, as feared, has obtained 21 seats – and its leader Michaloliakis used the opportunity for a truly Hitlerite speech containing overt threats. If elections proceed without result, this puts further tension on the formal liberalism of the system without resolving its contradictions, paving the way for military coup or worse. It is no coincidence, and must be remarked upon again, that the PASOK leadership of the Papandreou government used one of its last opportunities to act as government to replace the chiefs of staff of the different military branches. Precisely the lack of public notice given to this indicates the possibility is far from imaginary. Moreover, if there are elections fought on substantial issues on how to face the crisis, this will favor the socialist approach, which is the only one that can demonstrate how the contradictions in Greece are those of capital itself. But a failure of procedure that does not resolve these problems under worsening conditions will increase the public’s exasperation and desire for Order; and this is a route historically to be feared. Already the fascists representing national capital and outraged burghers have more power than anywhere in Europe bar Hungary.

Syriza must choose its options carefully, and the left must be ready to act in alliance if and when the confrontation comes to a head, be it externally or internally. They must confront the power of the oligarchy inside and outsidethe country head on. Smaller nations, like Iceland, show it can be done – now it must be done on a larger scale. The bourgeois politicians must not be allowed to use this opportunity to stall or force an outside solution, whether by Berlin or blackshirts. As it was once said about them, so the Greeks must now say to each other: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

http://mccaine.org/2012/05/07/the-greek-election-results/
#28
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
it would own beyond belief if DIMAR was like... fine... give us jobs and we'll cave... and then they joined a PASOK + ND + DIMAR coalition... and trolled SYRIZA into oblivion by holding power for four years with very minor changes to the loan agreement or whatever.
#29
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~
As always, McCaine is exactly on point here.
#30
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
we should have a left popular front!

*cobbles together 97 seats out of 300*

umm... what now folks...
#31
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"At the same time, a clause in the new EU treaty – little remarked upon at the time, but now crucial – expressly states that any Eurozone member state that decides to suspend use of the Euro thereby renounces membership of the European Union. "

what the fuck
#32
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semi-comprehensive update on whats going on in greece:

-new democracy failed to form a government

-syriza failed to form a government

-the mandate has been given to pasok to form a government. it looks like there is a very real possibility of democratic left (dimar - an anti-memorandum split from pasok) buckling under and reversing their stance to form a grand coalition with pasok and nd. a grand coalition with a total of 38% of the vote.

-if this doesn't happen - and it may well not happen, because the greek political establishment may decide that utterly destroying themselves is a worse choice than almost utterly destroying themselves - then there'll be new elections next month.

-the first opinion poll since the election has been published:

http://www.alphatv.gr/getattachment/Microsites/Ekloges-2012/Polls/20-04-2012/%CE%94%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%83%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%80%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7-Alpha-10-05-12.pdf.aspx

here's the important part:

Syriza: 27.7% (+10.9%)
New Democracy: 20.3% (+1.5%)
Pasok: 12.6% (-0.5%)
Independent Greeks: 10.2% (-0.4%)
KKE: 7% (-1.5%)
Golden Dawn: 5.7% (-1.2%)
Democratic Left: 4.9% (-1.2%)

in terms of parliament seats, this translates into:

Syriza: 128
New Democracy: 57
Pasok: 36
Independent Greeks: 29
KKE: 20
Golden Dawn: 16
Democratic Left: 14

so syriza would have an easier time of it building a coalition, at least for the purposes of working against the memorandum. additionally, i think after the events of today - dimar saying they would be willing to pretty much entirely go back on their anti-memorandum stance - their vote share would likely be lower. whether or not this would translate into more syriza votes or abstentions isn't really clear.

another interesting question was how people would have voted had they known the results beforehand. most said they wouldn't have changed their vote - apart from 18% of KKE voters, who said they would have voted for syriza, and 16% of golden dawn voters who said the same. so, perhaps greece's descent into fascism is a little further away than we thought. it'll likely stay that way as long as the left has the initiative on opposing austerity.

and finally, with new elections... trotskyists will be involved in leading a government...

Edited by jools ()

#33
Goldgelbes Löwenäffchen
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#34
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GoldenLionTamarin posted:



when i became a man i put away childish things like religion~

#35
YUNG JIRO AKA SHOWA STUNNA AKA
Post rating: +
religion owns and that fool knows it, that's why he's invested so much ca$h into his transformers: More Than Meets the Eye
#36
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Tsipras likes Iran and Venezuela and SYRIZA has said it wants Greece to leave NATO. Also SYRIZA members have good relations with Hamas and the party wishes to terminate a rapprochement Greece has recently had with Israel. Back during the Iranian protests over how Ahmadinejad blatantly fixed the elections Tsipras came out and said that all the talk of election fixing in Iran was an American conspiracy to try and overthrow the Iranian government, fully adopting the Iranian regime's position. Maybe they won't actually follow through with Greece exiting NATO but Greece will end up outside the Eurozone, diplomatically isolated and hostile to the West even without that. Turkey will be able to do as it pleases once Greece has nobody left to support it.
#37
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Excellent
#38
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#39
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lmao okay democratic left just said they would not join a pro-bailout government, looks like new elections are almost certain
#40
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