Greece 2012

[Lief 🗽]

Essentially, Greece has some pretty strict time limits for coalition negotiations that could lead to a very intense nine/ten days, and if ND (assuming they're the largest party, o/c) can't manage to form a government in 72 hours, then the parties that have the second and third most seats suddenly become much more important (and there's like six different parties those could be).

Thank God, if there's anything Greece doesn't need it's to become another Belgium. I wish more countries had this rule. Allowing coalition negociations for months is not good for anyone.

Ironically, the Belgian economy seemed to trundle along pretty well during the period when there was no government.

Not really ironic at all. With no government to pass austerity packages, there was nothing to drag the economy into recession.

[Lief 🗽]

Does Greece do exit polls? Or do they have another ridiculous election law against those?

[Lief 🗽]

"Renewing Independent Left, Renewing Right, Renewing Pasok, Renewing New Democracy, No to War, Party of Action, I Give Away Land, I Give Away Debts, Save Lives, Panagrarian Labour Movement of Greece" (perennial candidate)

Joke candidate?

Indeed.

Why is austerity bad, and what is the alternative?

People hate it because it's caused massive cuts in pensions, minimum wage, and universal tax hikes while the economy is in the hole and unemployment is astronomical. No alternative though that doesn't involve leaving the Eurozone, and even then there'd still be horrible economic repercussions. (or, that's my understanding anyway, don't know too much about the details).

So, PASOK and ND are the best?

PASOK and ND especially are the reason Greece is in the mess it's in (that and the Euro). Pretty much all of these parties are bad.

[Lief 🗽]

Guys, the KKE is kind of a joke party relic of the Cold War. Go read what their leaders and platform actually say. I doubt they'd ever join any government.

[Lief 🗽]

Don't know if anyone's posted this, but the interactive map on the Guardian of election results is great: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/may/06/greece-elections-results-map

[Lief 🗽]

Yeah I thought seat distribution was nationwide proportional (with the 3% threshold and the +50 seat thing), but then apparently each constituency has seats as well but these seats aren't really distributed proportionally but the national numbers still match what they should be if seat distribution was done nationally?!

[Lief 🗽]

As soon as Greece leaves the Euro, so does Spain. And then the whole house of cards collapses. Greece isn't big enough to take down the Eurozone on its own, but it's certainly big enough to start the mad dash for the door.

[Lief 🗽]

So I guess the big question is, Px: Will the voters show the maturity they failed to show in the last elections when confronted with this possibility?

Maturity ?!? Goddamnit, this post is so wrong that it depresses me...

Disagreement with the neoliberal establishment is a sign of immaturity and lack of seriousness, Antonio.

[Lief 🗽]

This is the poll, presumably: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120524-715300.html

Public Issue, released 5/24
SYRIZA: 30%
ND: 26%
PASOK: 15.5%
ANEL: 8%
DIMAR: 6.5%
KKE: 5%
XA: 4%
DIXA-DRASI: 3%

DATA RC, released 5/24
ND: 23.5%
SYRIZA: 23%
PASOK: 10.6%
ANEL: 5.3%
KKE: 4.6%
XA: 5.1%
DIMAR: 3.3%

[Lief 🗽]

Greece's Euro victory will push SYRIZA over the line.