The years of the crisis have shaken up the Greek political landscape like a three year old with a snow globe. Just a few short (but austerity filled) years ago, the current situation would have been unthinkable.
The traditionally dominant rival parties, PASOK and New Democracy, who spent the decades since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974 trading power and vicious denunciations, are now in a coalition. While New Democracy remains one of the leading political forces, the once all-powerful PASOK has imploded, polling around 5%. Evangelos Venizelos may have realized a life’s dream in becoming the leader of the party, but he appears to have gained control of a sinking ship laden with toxic waste. The center left is now in pieces, with efforts to reunite its splintering fragments, such as Venizelos’s ‘Elia’ (Olive Tree) coalition, gaining little traction.
Then there is SYRIZA whose rise mirrors PASOK’s fall. Once on the fringe of Greek politics, the avowedly anti-memorandum party has gone from being a coalition of small groups spanning the left-wing spectrum that gained 5% of the vote in the June 2009 elections, to the main opposition party (winning 27% of the vote in 2012). Now it consistently leads New Democracy in general election polls. (A poll released on Sunday by ALCO for the European elections put SYRIZA at 19.1% with ND at 18%).
Then of course there is the rise of Golden Dawn, the neo-nazi party that went from being a troublesome but small footnote to the Greek political scene to entering parliament with 7% of the vote in 2012 – and maintaining its following throughout its ongoing prosecution for criminal offenses.
Now the latest wildcard to be added to the political deck is ‘To Potami’, a new political party launched little over two weeks ago by well known journalist and TV presenter Stavros Theodorakis, that is already polling third (with 8,8% in the same poll by ALCO).
Mr Theodorakis is attempting to tap into general disillusionment with the established political system and offer what he defines as a different kind of politics. He states that his motivation is to create a grassroots movement untainted by the machinery and allegiances of the established political parties. Rather than career politicians the party will include ‘capable’ people from a wide range of backgrounds. A list of 20 people working with the new party includes individuals with a wide range of professions from sociologists and doctors to wine-makers and musicians. The official candidates for the European elections will be announced soon, while the party will not be participating in municipal elections.
Theodorakis also claims he wants to transcend the right-left divide saying that the priority is to find the best ideas, irrespective of where they come from. “We believe that synthesis is better than antithesis,” writes To Potami’s website. Although generally from a center-left background, Theodorakis has said he is open to ideas from the right.
The initiative was quickly criticized by parties on both sides as being superficial and not having concrete proposals. Some have also questioned the timing of Theodorakis’s move. With the center-left in disarray there is a belief that Theodorakis’s new party is an attempt to strike a killer blow for any attempts by PASOK and the Democratic Left party to regroup before the elections by drawing voters and momentum away from them.
When asked about the new party PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos said scathingly, “I wish good luck to any TV program that wishes to transform itself into a political party.”
However, despite the criticism, Mr Theodorakis’s approach seems to have struck an early chord with the Greek electorate with a survey by Alco released over the weekend showing the party polling at over 8.8% nationally in the European elections, only third place behind SYRIZA and New Democracy. Mr Venizelos’s PASOK (Elia) was at 5.1%.
If nothing else Mr Theodorakis has proven himself capable of generating a level of press interest most newly launched political groups could only dream of. This is of course no great surprise given that he is a high profile and experienced TV presenter, having hosted the popular program ‘Protagonists’ for over a decade. Friendly media coverage by a number of outlets has also helped.
The party’s name is also nothing if not media savvy. Meaning ‘The River,’ it immediately lends itself to a slew of metaphors, allowing journalists to write sentences such as this one, from a particularly gushing article in the Guardian: “It means “river” because its founder hopes that many will be able to join it, add their creative waters to its flow and that, like a river, it will stir up – but also bring clarity and vitality to – what he sees as the stagnant pool of established party politics.”
An alternative to the discredited, sclerotic political system and the career politicians that oversaw Greece’s collapse, as well as the rigid 20th century ideologies that all too often characterize Greek parties, is certainly an attractive prospect for many Greek voters. But while its professed quest for ‘the best solutions’ in order for Greece to establish a ‘comprehensive strategy to exit the crisis’ is commendable, it is also rather vague. Who decides what constitutes the ‘best solutions’? And on what grounds?
Currently the closest To Potami has to clear policy positions are a series of Q and A’s on its website for a range of disparate subjects from public sector reform to Europe’s handling of China. The answers include feel-good generalizations no one would disagree with (multinationals must pay their fair share!), mixed with curiously specific stances. As a result much of it reads less like a political manifesto and more like a list of good political ideas a group of friends have come up with in a bar.
For instance in the response to the question “Do you want to bring down the old political system?” the answer given in its entirety is:
“We want to change it. It isn’t easy but there are solutions. We will have to reduce party subsidies by 50%. Parties currently owe the banks 260 million euros. Why such waste? We should reduce the number of public servant secondments to party offices. We should reduce the number of MPs to 200 [there are currently 300]. We should reduce parliamentary breaks. We should make the framework for pre-election campaigns ever stricter to reduce the cost and pollution and general annoyance. You put up a banner? You take it down. And of course we have to stop the flow of dirty money.”
In one paragraph the party has taken position of reducing pollution from campaign litter, stopping dirty financing of campaigns and redrawing the entire electoral map of Greece by reducing the number of parliamentarians by a third.
It may be unfair to seize on such details with the party only a few weeks old. However if there is one truth in politics the world over it is that no matter how good one’s intentions, it is a messy business. Indeed there are many who point out that Theodorakis is not as clearly divested from the status quo as he would like to portray himself. It is a fact that TV station ‘Mega Channel’ that has employed the presenter since 1999 is one of the largest in the country and that its major stakeholders are publishing houses controlled by two of the most prominent state contractors, considered by many to be pillars of the long-established system of intertwining interests between politics and business in Greece. And some of Theodorakis’s shows have been heavily criticized for being biased, most notably his portrayal of the Farmakonisi tragedy.
In short for someone supposedly so anti-establishment, Theodorakis seems to have been rather close to it, for a rather long time.
Meanwhile, with over 20% of voters still undecided, the fact that To Potami is both anti-establishment but also relatively centrist in its positions leaves open the question of who a strong showing by the party in the European elections would affect more: SYRIZA or New Democracy, adding another swirl of complexity to the snow-globe of Greek politics.