Erstellt am: 6. 11. 2011 - 10:20 Uhr
Threatening everyone with a referendum
Emmanuel Sigalas
Dr. Emmanuel Sigalas Assistant Professor of European Politics at the Institut für Höhere Studien, Wien. He is originally from Athens.
In the evening of the 31st of October the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, shocked the world. He announced that Greece was going to hold a referendum to give the people the opportunity to decide themselves whether the rescue package deal should be adopted or not. The prospect of entrusting such an important decision to ordinary people sent the shivers to Europe and beyond. What would happen if the Greeks voted ‘no’? Isn’t it utterly foolish to ask the citizens to decide on a complex international deal that is daunting even for experts? Direct democracy is great if not only in theory at least when the political conditions allow it. And one necessary condition is that the political climate is not polarised.
But Greek politics are always polarised, even more so when a financial crisis is tearing the country’s economic and social fabric apart. As Mr. Papandreou explained when he recalled the referendum decision, the political parties have to work together and prove to the Greeks and the rest of the world that the country is united and committed in adopting the necessary measures that will allow it to receive the desperately needed financial aid. However, the last time the mainstream parties showed some willingness for cooperation was in 1989 when the conservative party Nea Dimokratia (ND), currently the principal opposition party, and the communist and leftist parties formed an interim coalition government for just five months.
The two parties alternating in power in Greece since 1974, PASOK and ND, have always despised the idea of a coalition government. Now it’s no different. The leaderships of the two parties give the impression that they prefer to see their country to go bankrupt, abandon the Euro and witness the national income return to the 1980s level than leave their party interests and personal ambitions aside. How else can one explain that G. Papandreou had to threaten everyone with a referendum to force the leader of ND, Antonis Samaras, to the negotiation table? And how are we to perceive Samaras’ initial rejection of Papandreou’s offer to form and maintain an interim coalition government for 12 instead of 4 weeks, as Samaras wants, before going to snap elections? Unfortunately, only a very cynical yet rational theory of Greek politics seems to explain all this.
From the moment it became clear that Greece’s debt was unsustainable and any financial assistance came with unpopular austerity measures, it was clear that PASOK’s and Papandreou’s re-election prospects were bleak. As the Greek crisis deepened and PASOK saw their popularity plummet while that of ND’s was rising, something had to be done to stop the opposition free-ride on the unpopular decisions charged to the government. This is when Papandreou decided to play the referendum card. The referendum would force ND to take a clear position on the financial rescue plans and consequently on the austerity measures. In other words, ND would have to share part of the responsibility for the unpopular reforms without partaking in the government. Under such a scenario the main opposition party had a lot to lose and nothing to gain. If, on the contrary, Papandreou had called for snap elections PASOK, as the ND demands, the governing party would have been simply conceding power to ND without a fight. Papandreou’s proposal for an interim coalition government that stays in power longer than a few weeks is detrimental to the electoral interest of ND. The latter would see their popularity fall and lose any advantage they had before Papandreou blackmailed the other parties with a referendum.
The two main parties of Greece therefore are not behaving irrationally. Quite the opposite, it’s because they are totally rational and defend their own ground so passionately that a compromise is difficult. But party interest is not the same as national interest. Today more than ever the two seem to diverge. If both parties don’t abandon their old-school party politics soon, then it will matter very little who is the next Prime Minister of Greece. After all, who wants to be the head of a bankrupt and discredited country?