At midnight on 26th April the deadline expired for parties to register their intention to stand in the national elections with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Areos Pagos – the Supreme Court.

Altogether 50 parties, coalitions of parties and independent candidates had announced their intention to stand by the deadline. Of these 38 were political parties, 10 coalitions and 2 independent candidates. (ERT News)

A candidacy dossier was submitted by the Ellines (Greeks) party, formed by Ilias Kasidiaris, one of the leaders of the former Chrysi Avgi party, who is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence for directing a criminal organisation. This was despite a ban on the party voted by Parliament on 23rd April, which was dependent on ratification by the Supreme Court. (A more detailed report on the background to the ban can be read here.) Another application was submitted by the EAN party of the former Supreme Court Prosecutor Anastasios Kanellopoulos, widely seen as having been instigated by Kasidiaris as a device to circumvent the possible exclusion of his own party from the elections.

The overall number greatly exceeds the number of submissions received for the previous national elections in 2019, when 20 parties and 4 coalitions put their names forward.

Multiple parties split the vote

This proliferation demonstrates the Greek enthusiasm for forming political parties to promote minority interests, as well as the tendency of Greek politicians to go off and form their own party as soon as they have a disagreement with their colleagues. The inevitable result is to split the votes available for the major parties and reduce the possibility of the leading party getting an absolute majority.

It was to counter this trend that the 50-seat bonus for the party winning the most seats was introduced in 2004. As we mentioned in an earlier post, the bonus was abolished by the SYRIZA government in 2016, and replaced with a system of proportional representation, but as the measure failed to achieve the two-thirds “super majority” required for its immediate implementation, it was deferred to the next election but one. The 2019 election was won by Nea Dimokratia under old system.

In 2020 the present government enacted a law to reinstate the bonus on a proportional basis, ranging from 20 to 50 seats depending on the percentage of votes received by the leading party. However, it again failed to pass by a two-thirds majority, with the result that it will not be implemented until the election following that of 21st May, the latter being carried out under the system of proportional representation.

If the current election ends in a stalemate, with neither of the major parties able to form a coalition government, the follow-up election on 2nd July would therefore be held under the reintroduced bonus system, increasing the likelihood of a definitive conclusion.

The parties which will stand

Of the original applicants, 36 parties and coalitions have been approved by the Supreme Court. The Ellines party was not allowed to stand, on the basis that its leader is an advocate for violence, the overturn of democracy and democratic institutions and fomenting hatred against racial groups and minorities. However the EAN party of Anastasios Kanellopoulos was allowed to stand. The other exclusions were all on procedural grounds such as the coincidence of names and emblems.

In practice, few of these will cross the threshold of 3 per cent of the vote required to enter Parliament. According to current polling the only parties likely to gain enough votes are the six which entered Parliament following the elections of 2019. These were:

Parties in Chania

In Chania, 30 parties will stand, according to the Haniotika Nea (04-05-23), fielding a total of 94 candidates. The seven parties already in Parliament, listed above, will each field 6 candidates, including some familiar names from the current and past Parliaments.

Leading the candidates for Nea Dimokratia is Sevi Voloudaki, the widow of MP Manousos Voloudakis who died in February, who has decided to continue her husband’s political activity. She is followed by Vasilis Digalakis, sitting MP, former Deputy Minister of Education and Religious Affairs and a professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Technical University of Crete. Also on the list is sitting MP and former Foreign minister Dora Bakogianni.

The SYRIZA list for Chania includes former SYRIZA Health minister Pavlos Polakis and former minister of the Environment and Energy Giorgos Stathakis.

Smaller parties seeking representation in Chania include no less than three alternative Communist parties, as well as the Plevsi Eleftherias (Sailing to Freedom) of Zoe Konstantopoulou, who was briefly Parliamentary Speaker in the last SYRIZA government, and the party of “Smoking groups for Art and Visual Composition” which aims to defend smokers’ rights and whose acronym in Greek reads KOTES (Chickens). The latter is fielding one candidate.