Greece’s two main parties suffered big losses in elections yesterday, exit polls showed, rocking the eurozone state’s austerity plans after a strong showing by protest groups including the neo-Nazis.
The ruling parties have been struck by an earthquake
Anti-austerity parties could have won up to 58 per cent of the vote between them, the exit polls showed.
The conservative New Democracy led by Antonis Samaras was the largest party with 17-20 per cent of the vote, insufficient to give it an absolute majority and down from 33.5 per cent at thelast election in 2009, the exit polls showed.
Socialist Pasok saw itsscore slump to 14-17 per cent from 43.9 per cent. The party even looked set to be leapfrogged into second place by the leftist Syriza, which scored 15.5-18.5 per cent,up from 4.6 per cent threeyears ago.
“The ruling parties have been struck by an earthquake. Ithas crushed Pasok and senta strong tremor throughNew Democracy,” shadowforeign minister Panos Panagiotopoulos said on television channel Mega.
Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was also set to enter Parliament for the first time since the end of the military junta in 1974, with six to eight per cent, making it the sixth-biggest party in the 300-seat chamber with some 25 lawmakers, it said.
“A new nationalist movement dawns,” Golden Dawn said on its website. “Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have dynamically joined the national cause for a great, free Greece.”
The fourth-biggest party was set to be Indepenent Greeks with 10-12 per cent, a new right-wing party set up by New Democracy dissident Panos Kammenos, followed by the communist KKE on 7.5-9.5 per cent.
The Democratic Left, a Europhile new leftist party, notched up 4.5-6.5 per cent. In total nine parties were set to enter Parliament compared with just five after the last election.
Both Pasok and ND have said they want the “troika” of the EU, International Monetary Fund and ECB to cut Greece more slack in their two bailout deals worth worth €240 billion.
But with voters angry at the austerity cuts demanded in response, many of the smaller parties, including possible kingmaker Syriza, want to tear up the agreements.
The communist KKE party want to leave the eurozoneand the neo-Nazis say they want to stop servicing Greece’s debts, an aim shared by Mr Kammenos who wants to turn to Russia to prop up the country.
The result therefore will make it tough for Mr Samaras, once he is officially tasked to do so by the president, to form a government able to keep its austerity promises and implement more cuts demanded by the country’s creditors.
His other options includea repeat of the currentuneasy Pasok-ND alliance or fresh elections.
“After two years of barbarism, democracy is coming home,” Syriza head Alexis Tsipras said earlier on Sunday. “The people will send a loud and clear message to all of Europe.”
Greece’s creditors havelittle appetite to loosen the bailout terms, let alone consider a third rescue.
With Athens having committed to finding in June another €11.5 billion in savings through 2014, any ambition to renegotiate terms “suggests a degree ofliberty they do not have,”Swiss bank UBS said in aresearch note.
In ominous comments widely quoted by Greek newspapers on Saturday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that if Greece’s new government deviated from its commitments, the country would “bear the consequences”.