By Nick Barnets
Greece is in the midst of the most polarized, high-stakes national election since the restoration of democracy in 1974. In the midst of the mudslinging between political parties in Greece, the worst terrorist attack to hit Europe in nearly 10 years struck France when two gunmen killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
During a campaign rally later that same day, Prime Minister Samaras used the incident to attack Syriza’s immigration policy saying, “In Paris there was an attack with at least 12 dead, and here (in Greece), some welcome and even call for more illegal immigrants.” The same day, Mr. Samaras also accused Syriza of wanting to disarm the police.
The controversial remarks did not go unnoticed in France and drew scathing comments over the Greek PM’s attempt to exploit the tragedy in Paris.
French magazine L’Express used a cartoon by Charlie Hebdo from 2006 to refer to Samaras’ comments: ‘It’s difficult to be supported by wankers,” while Figaro newspaper charged that “Samaras is using Charlie Hebdo as a tool”.
But outspoken former Health Minister and ND MP Adonis Georgiadis expressed similar sentiments to Samaras tweeting that the “the attack in Paris may prove for Europe the end of innocence with Islam. SYRIZA says borders should be open”.
Greek nationals in France took to twitter to apologise to the French people ‘for our ultra-right wing prime minister’.
Prime Minister Samaras, leader of center-right New Democracy is fighting an uphill battle against the emerging left-wing party, Syriza, never missing an opportunity to tell the Greek people and indeed the rest of the world, how Greece will implode if Syriza were to govern.
His campaign has relied largely on evoking fear of economic consequences if Syriza came to power and throw out the bailout terms agreed upon with the troika of international lenders (the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission).
Scaremongering of this sort proved successful in 2012, but Greek people are starting to become immune to this as they have not seen any noticeable improvements under Samaras and are angry enough at harsh austerity imposed by the so called Memorandum of Understanding that they do not care anymore for whatever alleged benefits there are of sticking to it as it is right now.
Though the gap between the Prime Minister’s New Democracy party and Syriza has lessened, ranging between 2.5 and 7.5 points depending on which poll one is looking at, Syriza is still consistently in the lead in all recent public opinion polling. New Democracy needs to draw in more support but are limited in all areas except for the far right in where they can draw new support.
Evidence of this is nothing new, as we’ve seen right wing figures emerge to high places under Samaras, such as health minister Makis Voridis, who in his youth took part in street brawls and was the leader of the youth wing of a party founded by jailed military coup leader Georgios Papadopoulos. Support for Greece’s most extreme right-wing party, Golden Dawn has fallen, meaning New Democracy may be able to gain some support by reaching out to voters who have abandoned them. This, however, comes at the expense of moderate voters who would be wary of supporting a New Democracy that is increasingly moving farther to the right of Greece’s political spectrum.
The terrorist attack in Paris is fueling Islamophobia, the notion that all Muslims are dangerous and to be kept away, which has been on the rise throughout the west. It is giving emerging anti-immigrant parties, such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, more popularity as more people become fearful of large numbers of immigrants, mainly from the Muslim world, to Europe.
Front National is known for its openly far right, anti-immigrant message, so it would not be a shock to hear Ms. Le Pen say what Mr. Samaras did in the wake of the attack. She chose her words more carefully, however, saying, “Nobody wants to make any confusion between our Muslim compatriots who are attached to our nation and those who believe they can kill in the name of Islam, but the evident refusal to make this linkage should not be an excuse for inertia or denial,” Le Pen said.
Antonis Samaras recently compared Alexis Tsipras to Marine Le Pen in order to paint Tsipras as an extremist. The way Mr. Samaras has reacted to the terrorist attack in France, compared to how Ms. Le Pen has, however, shows that he is willing to sound even further to the right of the Front National leader in a desperate attempt to attract far-right voters as he struggles to defeat Syriza in this month’s election.
Paris Ayiomamitis contributed to this report