Creditors Loom Over Elections in Greece

By SUZANNE DALEYSEPT. 16, 2015

The New York Times

ATHENS — Inside campaign tents pitched by various political parties seeking to win over Greek voters here, including an immense one set up near Korai Square by the leftist Syriza party of the former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the chairs and tables were empty the other day.

The leaflets sat untouched in neat stacks, a sharp contrast to the days before Greece’s last election, in January, when noisy crowds milled late into the night, debating policy and their country’s future.

With new elections scheduled for Sunday and Greece’s relations with its European partners in a fragile state, this debt-ridden country has much on the line. The next prime minister will have to navigate the tricky politics of the European Union at a time when some European leaders have made clear that their patience for keeping Greece in the eurozone is running out.

The winner will inherit the responsibility of generating sustained economic improvement after years of near depression-like conditions and of helping manage the unceasing flow of migrants through southern Europe.

But such stakes have hardly translated into election fervor. After months of turbulence, cliff-edge negotiations, a referendum and bank closings, many Greeks appear exhausted by the prospect of going to the polls for the fourth time in three years — their enthusiasm for Mr. Tsipras, 41, and his promises of change much diminished as they contemplate the future.

Mr. Tsipras was elected eight months ago as a leftist promising to stare down the country’s creditors and convince them that the austerity policies they had forced upon Greece had been counterproductive. Today, however, he is asking Greeks to re-elect him to carry out a deal that would impose yet a new round of budget cuts and other unsettling policy changes, a deal he signed this summer in order to secure a badly needed aid package of 86 billion euros, or about $97 billion.

Angeliki Stergiou, 56, who was waiting for a friend near the campaign tents, rolled her eyes in their direction. “We hear all those campaign songs,” she said. “We shouted all those slogans. Again and again. But it made no difference. No one really believes what they say anymore.”

With so much of the country’s future being dictated by the bailout agreement, some voters are even questioning whether they are still living in a democracy — whether it really matters who will be in charge when so much is to be determined by the country’s creditors. Some 120 pieces of legislation will have to be passed before the end of the year, experts say.

“These are very real questions for everybody,” said Manos Giakoumis, an economist and analyst for the website Macropolis, pointing out that Mr. Tsipras, his leading opponent and three other party leaders have already signed off on the details of the bailout package. “It is true,” Mr. Manos said, “that we already know what the winner will be doing after the elections.”

It is also true, Mr. Giakoumis said, that the Greeks have, in many ways, run out of options, having already spanned the political spectrum since the start of the economic crisis, going from center-left to center-right before turning in January to the charismatic, and untested, Mr. Tsipras.

But after months of volatile negotiations, he was unable to hold his ground. Facing bank closings and formal proposals to push Greece out of the eurozone, Mr. Tsipras capitulated and negotiated for a bailout that virtually guarantees more misery for millions of Greeks.

At first, however, it appeared that Mr. Tsipras had somehow managed to keep his enormous popularity, as many voters applauded him for having fought the good fight. He resigned last month and called new elections in a bid to consolidate his power within his party and potentially win an outright majority that would free him of the need to govern in a coalition.

But recent polls, if they are to be believed — they have not accurately predicted any of the recent votes here — suggest that he could lose or at least fail to win a convincing victory.

They show the race as neck and neck, between Mr. Tsipras and the new leader of the center-right New Democracy party, Evangelos Meimarakis, 61. Unlike his predecessor, Antonis Samaras, Mr. Meimarakis has a man-of-the-people manner.

At the same time, however, the polls indicate that large numbers of voters — some polls say more than 10 percent — are undecided.

Mrs. Stergiou, a retired civil servant, said she would vote again for Mr. Tsipras, not with the same enthusiasm as in the past, but because “there is no one else” and because she still harbors the faint hope that “maybe, just maybe, he will safeguard the middle class.”