It is no surprise that the increasingly discredited and dwindling little band of Social Democrats and Euro-communists (otherwise known as PASOK and the Democratic Left), who have decided to lend their support to the salvation of a patently failed capitalist order, have declined the black limousines and red dispatch boxes or whatever is their Athenian equivalent. The tactic appears to be to shamelessly vote through yet more misery whilst claiming it wasn’t really them “wot dunnit”.
For those who have not have had access to the small minority of competent journalists reporting from Athens it should be pointed out that 60% of Greeks voted against the Merkel “bailout deal” last Sunday and that would have been a clear majority even without the Neo-Nazis. And on the question of the extreme Right, those are still struggling to accept that the ‘Hard Left’ or ‘Far Left’ have now supplanted the Social Democrats should in fact rejoice that SYRIZA has emerged with such strength because, if they hadn’t, the far right vote would now be quite terrifying.
We should also reflect on what would have been said if SYRIZA had squeezed past New Democracy, got the 50 seat bonus and formed a government without much difficulty. This would have been a much more accurate reflection of the wishes of the Greek people but no doubt from Berlin to London we would by now be inundated with views that rejected the legitimacy of the result because SYRIZA had depended on the 50 seat bonus to form a government.
On a similar matter, it should be noted that had the appallingly sectarian and semi-geriatric KKE supported the Left electoral coalition, then they would now be in power as a small component of a Left government.
It is difficult to see how the present government could be less stable. The PASOK vote would have been even smaller had they not lied about their ability to ‘renegotiate’ the memorandum and the consequences of this for them and the Democratic Left will quickly become very clear. There is also a very strong demographic trend which places SIRIZA as the party with by far the strongest support amongst the younger sections of the electorate.
Finally and most importantly, the reality on the streets will not go away. Significant voices within their world’s ruling establishments are increasingly daring to suggest that a SYRIZA government standing up to the German led nightmare may be the only alternative to a total breakdown of society.
