Abstract
The prevalence of the right-wing party of Nea Dimokratia (ND) in the Greek political landscape reflects an enormous change in the political behavior. Citizens have not chosen a simple switch on the power but contributed with their votes to a strategic defeat of populism and at the same time, they paved the way for the search for a new type of leadership, which is close to realism in handling with the social problems that cannnot be implemented merely with calculated financial costs. The dominance of conservative ND is not an ideological choice. It is a choice that runs counter to the logic of falsely or hypocritical negotiating austerity measures opposed to Greece by his lenders (due to memoranda) and the consequent tax-tornado as a result of negotiating failure with the partners in the EEC and the IMF. The positive choice for ND also reflects the contradiction with the misguided manipulations of public opinion regarding the strategy of micro-concessions and micro-alliances as a means of concluding a “political-social alliance”.
Highlights
It is clear that strategic electoral defeats do not refer to percentages, but to structural transformations and shifts in the electorate
The citizens have not chosen a simple switch on the power but contributed with their votes to a strategic defeat of populism and at the same time, they paved the way for a new type of leadership, which is close to pragmatism and rationalism in handling with social problems
It turns out that all SYRIZA's strategic political choices have been defeated, which is overshadowed by many electoral polls that deliberately cultivated the impression that the difference between Nea Dimokratia and SYRIZA will exceed 12%
Summary
It is clear that strategic electoral defeats do not refer to percentages, but to structural transformations and shifts in the electorate. In this sense, the last elections in Greece reflect an enormous change in the political stance of the electorate. The Greek public was disgusted against the over-promising rhetoric and the under-delivery politics experienced under SYRIZA’s rule. In these terms “Greece already has a first-hand experience of economic populism and rejected it after a long time of hope, making a turn towards pragmatism”, as Pagoulatos states (Lana-Guggenheim, 2019). Its record in government has been so full of compromises and retreats that it
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