Coalition unwound

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis for Cartoon Movement http://www.cartoonmovement.com/p/6035

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras marked one year in the job on Friday by becoming the leader of what was effectively Greece’s fifth government in four years after Democratic Left’s decision to drop out of the coalition left his New Democracy party and PASOK as the two that remained from a previous partnership of three. The dire economic situation, the pressure of its lenders and the historical absence of consensus politics in Greece meant it was always going to be a challenging job. Samaras enters the second year of his premiership on an equally shaky footing.

Democratic Left’s departure had been in the making for some time. The three parties that formed the coalition in June 2012 did so knowing that Greece had been balancing on the precipice but their intention of moving the country to safer ground soon lost its potential to drive this three-wheeled vehicle on. Beyond securing Greece’s place in the euro and rebuilding trust with the skeptical troika, there was no grand, or even less pronounced, vision to spur the coalition’s efforts. As the drachma risk faded and lenders were placated, so the three-party government’s raison d’etre dissolved. It was replaced by friction fuelled by each party’s desire to stake its claim to any positive development and distance itself from anything negative. As the stardust was blown away, the political and ideological splits were revealed.

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ERT: From test card to test case for Greece

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis http://www.cartoonmovement.com/p/6035

Having ploughed on through a number of sticky patches over the last 12 months, it would be more than careless of Greece’s coalition government to sink into the mire due to differences over how to deal with public broadcaster ERT. Yet, a year on from when a second election in June led to the formation of the three-party administration, its future seems less secure than ever.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s decision to announce on Tuesday the immediate closure of the state TV and radio service left his coalition partners, Evangelos Venizelos of PASOK and Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left, apoplectic and demanding a meeting, which will take place on Monday and could put the administration at risk if a compromise is not found. They had not consented to this move and there had been no debate about it in Parliament. A legislative act was signed only by the ministers from Samaras’s conservative New Democracy party and, after 75 years, the broadcaster went silent.

The problem for Samaras is that the backlash to his decision was rather noisy. ERT employees refused to comply with orders to abandon their posts and continued to broadcast with the help of volunteers who got the broadcaster’s main TV news channel, NET, back on air. Thousands of people gathered outside the service’s headquarters in northeastern Athens and opposition parties condemned the decision. Criticism soon began arriving from journalism federations outside Greece. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) also labelled the shutdown “a damning first in the history of European Broadcasting.” In a letter to Samaras, 50 director generals of Europe’s public broadcasters said his action was “undemocratic and unprofessional”.

PASOK’s road of returnism

More interested in reaching a “new settlement” with the European Union than ancient Greece, British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday defended his belief that the Parthenon Marbles should not be returned to Athens, saying he does not subscribe to the idea of “returnism”. At PASOK headquarters, though, they have no reservations about returnism.

The return of four Socialist deputies who quit the party following a tense parliamentary vote in November to approve a new package of austerity measures and reforms that secured Greece’s latest loan tranche was confirmed on Thursday. The four – Costas Skandalidis, Angela Gerekou, Michalis Kassis and Yiannis Koutsoukos – failed to support the package and lost their place in PASOK’s parliamentary group.

Welcoming them back on Thursday, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos said that their time away from the fold was “part of the cost” the party had to pay for Greece getting its December loan installments and apparently reducing drastically the threat of a eurozone exit.

Under the big top

Soon after being propelled to international fame for publishing the Lagarde list and facing prosecution for it, journalist Costas Vaxevanis wrote in an opinion piece that “democracy is like a bicycle.” As Greek MPs debated the merits of which politician to probe in connection with the handling of the depositors list for 14 hours on Thursday, democracy began to look more like a unicycle, ridden by a giant clown.

There have been many jaw-dropping moments in Parliament since this crisis began. For instance, who can forget becoming part of a parallel universe as the world waited for George Papandreou to receive a vote of confidence in late 2011 just so he could resign a few days later? Votes on midterm fiscal plans, bailout packages and new austerity measures – Greece has seen it all over the past few years. But none of those moments could match the sheer futile hysteria of Thursday’s debate.

Trading places

What a delicious irony that on Monday – the day that at least one paper carried a headline labeling SYRIZA “the new PASOK” – the leftists announced the results of a vote aimed at uniting the party behind a central vision just a few hours before former PASOK high flier Andreas Loverdos heralded the creation of a new political movement, or would-be party, that splits the Socialists even further.

As SYRIZA attempts to leave behind its days of myriad factions and to create greater cohesion behind a common set of policies, PASOK – the erstwhile epitome of the party coming before anything else – breaks up into ever smaller pieces.

Sunday’s vote was the next step in SYRIZA’s effort to speak with one voice. Since its inception, the party has been made up a variety of groupings from the left side of the political spectrum, such as Eurocommunists, anti-capitalists and ecologists. This has made for a rare polyphony, an attractive feature in times when the urgency of bailout bills means Parliament’s rules, regulations and even role are often steamrollered. The plurality of views created and ebb and flow that kept the party moving and provided a platform for all views, regardless of how controversial they may have been. Matthaios Tsimitakis, a freelance journalist who follows SYRIZA closely, refers to the process as “exhaustive democracy.”