A crowded field

Syriza edges closer to victory, but with uncertainty over its coalition partner

Jan 10th 2015 | ATHENS |

The Economist

THE far-left Syriza party continues to hold a small but steady lead in the polls ahead of Greece’s election on January 25th. After such a long period ahead of the ruling party, this lead seems unlikely to be overturned in just two-and-a-half weeks, say pollsters.

Yet Alexis Tsipras, the firebrand Syriza leader, has been toning down his anti-European rhetoric. He now says no “unilateral” decisions will be taken on Greece’s obligations to its creditors, a signal that a Syriza government would not surprise markets with an immediate default. Mr Tsipras’s message to voters is simple: a promise to end four bleak years of austerity with a splurge of social spending.

The café debate has shifted, too. It is no longer about whether the centre-right New Democracy party led by Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, can pull off a last-minute victory (Mr Samaras still has a higher personal approval rating than Mr Tsipras), but over which small party would be Syriza’s most likely coalition partner. For Syriza officials concede they may well fall short of an outright majority, even with the 50-seat bonus that goes automatically to the party that finishes first.

The choice could be harder than it looks. At least four small parties are expected to beat the threshold of 3% to get into parliament. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party may finish third, even though its leaders are in jail awaiting trial on charges of running a criminal organisation. The perennially Stalinist Greek Communist Party has long rejected Mr Tsipras’s overtures favouring co-operation, despite Syriza’s own communist roots.

That leaves To Potami (the River), a new moderate centre-left party founded only in 2014 by Stavros Theodorakis, a popular television journalist, and the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), which is tainted by its two-and-a-half-years spent as New Democracy’s junior coalition partner. Pasok is already shaping up as the most likely contender to back Syriza: its leader, Evangelos Venizelos, stresses populist measures that he backed while in government, despite opposition from the “troika” of Greece’s creditors from the European Union and the IMF, such as letting tax debtors stretch repayments out in as many as 100 instalments. Support from disillusioned Pasok voters underpinned Syriza’s sudden rise from left-wing outlier into a serious contender for power during Greece’s two back-to-back elections in 2012.

But that was before the intervention of George Papandreou, the prime minister who signed up to the international bail-out in 2010 and a former Pasok leader (and son of its founder). He has unexpectedly launched a new party, the Movement of Democratic Socialists. It could win about 4% of the vote, according to one poll, trading both on the Papandreou political brand and on his appealing vision of a centre-left consensus to rebuild a society exhausted by austerity and polarised politics. If Mr Papandreou splits the Pasok vote, Mr Venizelos’s chances of joining a Syriza-led government look slim.

Meanwhile the messages from Berlin are becoming louder: Greece should in principle stay in the euro, but Mr Tsipras’s demands for a debt write-off and spending binge are unacceptable. The spectre of a Grexit, laid to rest while the Samaras government got on with its reforms, has resurfaced. Yet polls show that voters still believe that Greece’s place in the euro is secure. “The current view is that Germany is bluffing and the euro zone would collapse if we were forced out,” says one pollster. “But that could change as polling day comes closer.”