What's Going On In Greece?

I’m getting this question a lot these days from outside of Greece.  It shows understandable concern.  The place seems in meltdown.  Conventional political wisdom has bitten the predominant political parties on far more vital parts than their collective asses.  Fringe parties are now mainstream members of Parliament, and if no cohesive coalition is formed by Sunday, new elections by mid-June seem inevitable.

It’s hard to imagine how the once dominant New Democratic and PASOK parties can better their positions through new elections without offering the electorate fresh leadership and new ideas.  Then again, there’s always the chance that before new elections leaders of the emergent parties will demonstrate to voters that they are no better (or potentially worse) than the heads of the parties they seek to replace in power.  

On the other hand, new elections could very well make things worse. 

Greek political parties in order of number of newly elected members of Parliament:

New Democratic

SYRIZA

PASOK

Independent Greeks

Communist Party of Greece

Golden Dawn

Democratic Left

 I’m not offering my opinion on the subject.  I’ll leave that to others, notably two distinguished Greek journalists who expressed their views this week in commentaries for Greece’s most prominent daily newspaper, Kathimerini: Nick Makloutzis wrote “One swing of the wrecking ball,” in which he reviews the decline and likely ruin of the two main Greek political parties, and Nikos Konstandaras, in “Yesterday strikes back,” discusses a potential “cycle of conflict that will only end in catastrophe.”   They are well worth reading.

Nick Malkoutzis

Nikos Konstandaras

There is another bit of writing out there that is pertinent to the sudden rise of extreme fringe groups who’ve successfully exploited anger against Greece’s sizable immigrant population into parliamentary seats for themselves, and raised articulated E.U. concern at the development. 

This observation, though, was written two years ago as part of a new mystery due out in a little more than three weeks:

“Every country in Europe has its own sort of immigrant issues.  Ethnic stereotypes are a convenient, irresistible scapegoat for political failings, especially in hard times, and no one wants to be the first to point a serious finger at another country’s shortcomings in dealing with its immigrants.

“But [Greece’s] adversaries would love to switch the focus of the debate from our country’s financial problems to our national character.  Paint us as indifferent to the plight of non-Greeks, an intolerant place where only Greeks are treated as deserving of protection, and all others be damned.  It’s a volatile, irrational, and emotional argument but one that could turn world opinion against us if it found traction in the press.  And then it would no longer be just a question of denying us further bailout funds, but whether or not to drum us out of the E.U.”

***

There had always been refugees fleeing despots and turmoil in Greece’s region of the world, but when Greece joined the E.U. in 1981 it was essentially a homogeneous land of less than ten million.  With financial prosperity came Filipinos to serve in domestic jobs no longer done by Greeks and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought a wave of Eastern European immigrants seeking better lives, but it was after 2002 and the confluence of the euro currency launch, America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Greece’s all-out building boom for the 2004 Athens Olympics, that the floodgates opened. 

Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Poles came to put their much needed construction skills to work for pay far greater than any they could dream of back home, and Greece’s porous island and mainland borders became an irresistible magnet for those fleeing Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and what at times seemed all of struggling Africa.  They were the metanastes—the foreigners who came to work or simply escape a life in chaos elsewhere.

Greece’s population was now almost eleven and a half million of which ten percent were estimated to be immigrants.   No one knew exactly how many more were living hidden lives within the country, but with the abrupt change in Greece’s financial fortunes virtually every lost job or criminal act now seemed somehow blamed on the [foreigners].  No one had to tell Andreas how ugly the anger was brewing—on all sides.

Yes, that’s my own Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis amid ruminations on what’s behind the horrific murders of immigrants and gypsies in TARGET: TINOS.

As a postscript, I’m happy to say that all of the parties charged with trying to form a new government have refused to include the most vitriolic element of the fringe that’s made it into Parliament as any part of a coalition government; journalists have aggressively challenged that party’s efforts to intimidate the press; and the mayor of Greece’s second largest city has publically called for Greece to copy Germany’s law and ban any “Nazi parties.”

We shall see... 

Jeff—Saturday