More thoughts on Greece from my friend Pavlos Stavropoulos: A lot has been said today and even more will be said over the next several days about Syrizas unholy coalition with AN.EL (Independent Greeks) and the latters highly problematic social and anti-immigrant positions. First and foremost. Kammenos and AN.EL? Seriously? Are you shitting me? Gag me with a pitchfork! Gaahh! Alright, now that I got that out of the way, lets parse this decision out. Any analysis of this decision has to be evaluated in light of the choices that are actually available. They do need to partner with someone, so who? KKE has retreated back to their usual purist stalinist selves where they are the only voice for the proletariat and everyone else is a traitor. Good luck working with them. Potami is a seriously unknown, and therefore highly unreliable force. You have no idea where they stand and when they will just flip (or flip out). Any coalition with them is fundamentally unstable (and frankly some positions taken by individual members are highly problematic as well but they are never critiqued within the party itself because they are not an official position since Potami hasnt really taken any official position other than We are not like anyone else.). You want to work with that? I dont. PASOK? The original architects of austerity? New Democracy and Golden Dawn? Nuff said. Which leaves us with AN.EL or going back to elections hoping that the second time around Syriza will gain an absolute majority. And risking complete panic or losing ground. Study the last several elections. Abstention keeps going up as is support for the smaller parties that dont make it into parliament. Syriza losing ground in a second election is as much a possibility as gaining ground. They have 149 seats and momentum. A second election could give them fewer seats and a weaker position from which to negotiate. Oh, and on the way to second elections, the mandate to form a government has to first be given to the second and then the third party (even if there is no chance that they will actually succeed in forming a government). Golden Dawn is the third party. My hands broke out into cold sweat even writing this paragraph. No, just NO. So now lets look at AN.ELs anti-immigrant positions. The first and simplest immigration issue to tackle would be the issuing of travel papers to those who are in Greece and want to go to Europe. AN.EL would most likely support that. Sure, it would be because they want immigrants out of Greece but those people who want them will actually have papers. I can live with that. Most importantly so will thousands of people who might now have a chance at a decent life. A clear path to legal residence and citizenship for those who have been born in Greece or have lived here for a long time is something that AN.EL will have a very hard time swallowing. So? Syriza only needs two extra votes to get that passed and there are plenty of MPs from other parties that will support that. AN.EL is not likely to leave the coalition over this issue, especially if this is something that doesnt come up until after the far more pressing issues of renegotiating the bailout and dealing with the urgent humanitarian crisis, where the positions of the two parties are not that far apart. If AN.EL has some victories to show on that front and then they vote against pro-immigrant measures that really rankle them life is not so bad for them and Syriza still gets their platform through. AN.EL also doesnt really have an organized social movement that they can mobilize so they cant make much trouble for Syriza in the streets. I could go on here but I hope my point is clear. Finally, and in my opinion critically, the Right might have lost the parliament but they still have a lot of power, especially in the police and military (where Syriza has practically no support). If you dont understand what this means, read modern greek history. If you are pressed for time google Greece and Metaxas (no, not the brandy), security battalions, civil war, junta. Watch the film Z. Then ponder for a moment the fact that this historic election where for the first time a far-left party got first place is also an election that gave a neo-nazi party third place. If Syrizas coalition with a right-wing party defuses some of the virulent anti-communists of the right and reduces the likelihood of interference from their quarters then that alone could make this unholy coalition worth it. So we are back to an imperfect situation. There are some who have said that the coalition with AN.EL added a flaw to a historic moment. Can any one point out any historic moment that wasnt in one way or another also flawed? Welcome to the world as is. Do I wish that things were different? Sure I do. A lot of us do. But we dont have a magic lamp with a genie. We dont get three wishes. What we do get is a beautiful yet seriously messed up world and a lot of hard work ahead of us. Some of that work might have gotten just a tad easier yesterday. I can live with that.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 06:08:03 +0000
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