Greece: Indecisive Voters Will Determine Result of Triple Elections

By Con George-Kotzabasis May 17, 2014

On the 18^th and 25^th of May respectively, Greeks will be voting in the country’s municipalities and prefectures, and for the European Parliament. According to all polls, the contest between the major parties of the Coalition Government of New Democracy/Pasok and Syriza will be very close, and apparently the indecisive voters, who comprise 12% of the electors, will determine which of the major parties will win the elections.

In my opinion, the majority of this indecisive section of the electorate will cast their vote in favour of the Samaras Government—especially in the European parliamentary elections--and thus the latter will be the winner of the triple elections. My reasoning is that if this part of the electorate was inclined and had a strong feeling to protest against the government, for the harsh austerity measures the latter had to implement, it would already have shown this inclination by intimating to the pollsters that it would vote for the Opposition Party of Syriza. It seems therefore to me that the undecided voters are more concerned about the political stability of the country and the slow but robust steps that the Samaras government is taking in pulling the country out of the crisis, which all serious international observers acknowledge and most economic indicators show, and thus will vote for the security the government accomplished in keeping Greece within Europe, than the insecurity the left-wing Opposition Party of Syriza represents with its dangerous and foolhardy policies that could lead to the ousting of Greece from Europe and to the economic catastrophe of the country.  

New Democracy under Strong Leadership of Samaras Will Win Elections on June 17

By Con George-Kotzabasis June 15

The survival of nations may sometimes depend on the life of one man. Edward Gibbon

It is inordinately difficult, even for a modern Tiresias, to predict the outcome of the Greek elections, especially when voters are actuated by their intense hopes and fears about the results of either the pro or anti-memorandum scenario that would affect so profoundly their future existence. However judging from the swift change of Syriza’s policy only few days before the voting from the hard position of denouncing the Memorandum to the soft position of solely re-negotiating the burdensome points of the Memorandum with the European leaders, which is no different from the position of New Democracy, Pasok, and the Democratic Left,  Syriza was forced to change its intransigent stand in annulling the Memorandum, as it was pronounced in its pre-electoral programme last week, as a result, I suspect, of an internal private poll that showed clearly that New Democracy was outdistancing by a wide margin Syriza in the opinion poll, thus compelling the latter to abandon its principle policy of annulling the Memorandum that apparently scared the electorate that such action would entail Greece’s exit from the Eurozone. Now Syriza sings its hosannas to re-negotiating the Memorandum and making a desperate attempt to join the chorus of reason from its previous dangerous position of denouncing it and taking Greece out of the European Union. But this reversal of policy is too late for Syriza and is exposing it also to the fraud that it attempted to perpetrate on the Greek people.

Antonis Samaras, the illustrious leader of New Democracy, in his sagacious move to form a Pro-European Patriotic Front that would anchor Greece within Europe while negotiating the shoals of the Memorandum that threatened the country’s sinking into everlasting debt and economic poverty, will be the justified victor of the election on June 17. The Tsipras phenomenon was always a flash in the pan and as soon as it was placed upon the burning coals of reality would be blackened and return back to its true colour that from the beginning was its natural intellectual and political shade.