A tight vote for the euro

FEAR of being forced out of the euro was slightly stronger than anger over continuing austerity at Sunday’s Greek election. It propelled the centre-right New Democracy party into first place, just ahead of Syriza, the radical-left coalition. With 97% of the vote counted the conservatives won 29.7% compared with 26.9% for the leftists. The PanHellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) came a distant third with 12.3% after a large chunk of its voters (public sector workers, trade unionists and pensioners) had defected to Syriza, lured with promises that the state would not be shrunk if the left came to power.

Antonis Samaras, the 61-year-old centre-right leader, was set to receive a mandate to form a government at midday today from Karolos Papoulias, Greece’s president. After two general elections in six weeks (coalition talks failed after an inconclusive vote on May 6th) a sense of urgency is evident. Global leaders who are gathering in Mexico for a meeting of the G20 group of rich and emerging countries will be watching Greek developments closely. Some see a stable coalition government in Athens as critical for European efforts to prevent the eurozone from falling apart.

Mr Samaras’s refusal to support Greece’s first bailout in 2010 means he will have to work hard at convincing eurozone leaders he is serious about completing fiscal and structural reforms required by the second €130 billion bailout, which the previous coalition government was too timid to undertake. On Sunday night, Mr Samaras sounded statesman-like. Instead of claiming victory in the election, he said: “There will be no new adventures, Greece’s position in the eurozone will not be put in doubt.”

Coalition talks were expected to start later today. The Democratic Left, a moderate leftwing party that won a modest 6.25% of the vote, is seen as a possible third partner for a pro-European coalition of New Democracy and PASOK. Fotis Kouvelis, a low-key Athenian lawyer who is the party’s leader, could prove helpful in averting potential collisions between Mr Samaras and Evangelos Venizelos, the leader of PASOK. Mr Samaras and Mr Venizelos were clearly uncomfortable with each other in a previous coalition government headed by Lucas Papademos, a technocrat and former vice president of the European Central Bank. New Democracy advisers said they hoped a government would be in place by mid-week. If all three parties participate, the governing coalition would have a comfortable majority of 179 seats in the 300-seat parliament. New Democracy would take 130 seats, thanks to a 50-seat bonus for the winning party, PASOK 33 and the Democratic Left 16 seats.

Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he would not participate in a government of “national salavation” as proposed by Mr Samaras on Sunday night. His party would serve as the official opposition, he said, while carrying on a continuing struggle to overthrow the bailout agreement. He can afford to wait, after seeing his party surge from a small alternative group polling around 4% of the vote in 2009, to second place in parliament with 71 seats. Unsurprisingly, Mr Tsipras presented his election defeat as a triumph, telling an unscheduled midnight rally of cheering supporters on Sunday that “overturning the bailout is the only viable solution for Greece.”

Three other smaller parties will also enter parliament: Independent Greeks, a nationalist rightwing splinter group (7.5% of the vote); the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group (6.9% of the vote); and the Greek Communist Party that received 4.49% of the vote.

Some Greeks were clearly exhausted, or bored, by two months of unrelieved politicking. The abstention rate on Sunday rose to an unprecedented 40%, up from 34% at the May 6th election. They do not hold out much hope for a betterment of their plight from the new government.