Just as PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, who withdrew his objection to the closing of the national broadcaster ERT, is being rewarded with key ministerial positions for his party in a new coalition government, a poll shows that if early elections had proceeded the once-dominant party would have won only a handful of seats in Parliament.
Venizelos, in line to be Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister under Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras, is heading a party that now has 4 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent when it won elections in 2009 and ranks sixth among the seven parties in Parliament.
Greek law stipulates that a party must win at least 3 percent of the vote to enter Parliament and the poll by Rass, released by Typos tis Kyriakis, showed that the unrelenting support for austerity measures by PASOK did even more damage to the Democratic Left (DIMAR) that withdrew from the coalition in a dispute over Samaras’ shuttering of ERT and the mass firings of all 2,656 workers there.
If elections were held now – which would have happened if Venizelos had also withdrawn from the government – DIMAR would get just 3 percent and might have been forced out of the Parliament. It ranks dead last now. The poll was taken from June 18-20. DIMAR walked on June 21 so the poll doesn’t reflect what happened in the aftermath of the decision by the party’s leader Fotis Kouvelis to leave the government.
According to the survey, New Democracy (ND) slightly increased its lead over the major opposition Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) with an edge of 24.8-23 percent. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party remained in third but slipped to 8.1 percent, followed by the KKE Communists at 4.7 percent and the Independent Greeks at 4.1 percent.
Samaras is leading by far in terms of suitability for Prime Minister with 46.8% against SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras’ 33.4 percent while ND seems clearly to be winning with 54.4% against SYRIZA which pollled 38.8 percent in a head-to-head battle.
The poll showed most Greeks believe ERT, viewed as a dumping ground of patronage by ND and PASOK for decades, should have been restructured, with 72.2 percent backing Samaras’ plan to restructure it into a slimmed-down version to be called NERIT with a staff of 1000-1200, less than half its former status.
To the question: “Do you want the government to carry out the four years period or to go to early elections,” a big majority of 61 percent believe it should finish its term, with only SYRIZA supporters against it. Opinion is split over the coming firings of public workers, supported by a slim majority of 54.4 percent but the bad news for SYRIZA is that 75 percent of Greeks do not support its objections against austerity measures being imposed on the orders of international lenders to keep rescue monies flowing into the country.
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