The parliamentary election in Greece, October 2009

Abstract

On 4 October 2009 the Greek public went to the polls, amidst the financial crisis and two years ahead of schedule, and delivered a landslide victory for the centre-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). The decision to call early elections was announced by the Prime Minister and leader of the conservative-liberal New Democracy (ND), Costas Karamanlis on 4 September, less than a hundred days after his party’s poor showing in the elections for the European Parliament. This decision caused widespread surprise, not least among the members and supporters of the governing party among whom it triggered a fierce debate about the timing of the elections. However, ND’s meagre parliamentary majority, coupled with public dissatisfaction with the government – for various reasons, notably a string of corruption scandals and its perceived inadequate response to the calamitous forest fires around Athens during the summer of 2009 – significantly decreased the ‘‘moral support’’ available to the administration in its push for economic reforms. The need for such reform, in particular to narrow the fiscal deficits which had caused an enormous increase in the level of public debt, was even more pressing given that the global financial crisis, and its knock-on impact on the real economy, had further worsened the country’s public finances. It was always likely that the elections would be called ahead of schedule, as a result of the lack of consensus among the major parties on the election of the next President of the Republic. The President is elected indirectly, by Parliament. A provision in Article 32 of the Constitution stipulates that, unless the 180-vote majority within parliament, the parliament is automatically dissolved. This provision paves the way for elections in case there is no necessary majority to elect the President. The leader of the major opposition party PASOK, Giorgos Papandreou, had declared that he would have exploited this provision in the forthcoming (February 2010) presidential election by refusing to support the re-election of Carolos Papoulias, incumbent President (and former PASOK minister of foreign affairs), in order to trigger elections. Karamanlis