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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Greece was due to go to the polls on 10 October following the collapse of the government of Constantine Mitsotakis and his conservative New Democracy party.
The defection of two MPs to the breakaway group of sacked foreign minister Antonis Samaras triggered the election. The government lost its majority in parliament just as it tried to rush through a bill to sell off the telecom industry.
It brought to a head a long running political crisis that has seen New Democracy repeatedly on the brink of collapse. Polls at the end of September gave the socialist party, PASOK, a ten point lead.
Samaras appeared to have miscalculated in his bid to be a power broker in the next parliament, with polls giving him less than 6 percent of the vote. However, the Coalition of the Left – led by the former Communist Party – looked even weaker, struggling at around 3 percent. It remains tainted by its alliance with New Democracy in 1989–90.
The return of a PASOK government seemed the likeliest outcome, headed by Andreas Papandreou, prime minister for eight years through the 1980s. Papandreou has made vague promises to raise living. standards and provide jobs, under the campaign slogan, ‘A quiet force for change.’
Papandreou no longer mentions restoring the jobs of the Athens bus workers sacked a year ago. He no longer pledges to reverse the stalled telecom privatisation – talking instead of allowing no more than 49 percent of shares to go into private hands.
Papandreou has now proposed a post-election meeting with representatives of 60 of the biggest companies in Greece. ‘Business knows it can trust us’, he proclaims, ‘It did very well in the eight years of PASOK government.’
Those eight years proved a profound disillusion for Greek workers – resulting in the election of a Tory government that prided itself on a Thatcher-like approach. New Democracy claims an alliance of PASOK and big business interests bought the cooperation of Samaras and his ‘traitors’ to bring down the government just when ‘the years of sacrifice are over’. It threatens a currency devaluation and economic collapse if PASOK wins.
But New Democracy’s austerity programme has done nothing to ease the crisis in the economy. Industrial output has fallen for the last three years. Unemployment is almost 10 percent and rising. Inflation is 15 percent – the highest in the EC – and shows no sign of coming down.
Mitsotakis made savage cuts in pensions and in spending on schools and hospitals, but the government debt goes on rising. At 1.3 times the country’s GNP, it is more than double the limit demanded by the EC.
New Democracy did succeed in cutting workers’ pay. Wages have failed to match inflation for the past three years.
But Mitsotakis never succeeded in making a decisive breakthrough against union organisation.
The past three and a half years have seen a series of huge strike waves, most notably in autumn 1990 and the summer and autumn of 1992. Strikes and demonstrations have become routine.
The gains Mitsotakis has made have come in concessions from union leaders afraid to bring down his government. Even the relatively quiet summer days immediately before Mitsotakis fell saw Athens blacked out by a power workers’ strike and a 24 hour public sector strike. The unions are stronger and more militant now than four years ago.
Workers anticipate a real change after the election. Athens busworkers, for example, believe they will get their jobs back. A year after being sacked, they staged a pre-election rally in the capital and planned a mass meeting on the night of the vote. There were even calls for them to mark a PASOK victory by marching on the scab bus depots.
There is a similar mood among shipyard workers who have seen their yards close, and among the former workers of shutdown state factories. The expectations in a PASOK government are huge, and a victorious Papandreou could be in for a rough ride.
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