"Far right in Greece unlikely to have much future impact
Monday 21 October 2002

Despite their subsequent victory in the second and final round of the Greek local and municipal elections, New Democracy, the opposition conservative party, emerged as rather gloomy front runners following the first round of voting. The high showing made by Laos, a right wing nationalist party formed in 2000 by George Karatzaferis, a former New Democracy MP that took 14% of the vote in a key race, came as a shock to the party. While there may be those who fear that the rise of Mr Karatzaferis may risk New Democracy's chances of winning the next general election, due to be held in April 2004, such predictions seem unlikely. There were specific reasons for the high showing made by LAOS and in the medium term neither Greece nor New Democracy are likely to be troubled by them too much in future.

Conservatives make strong gains, but lose an important opportunity

Greeks went to the polls over the last two weekends to vote in wide ranging regional and municipal elections, the final results of which proved to be broadly within expectations. As anticipated, PASOK, the governing socialist party, led by Costas Simitis, the Greek Prime Minister, saw a fall in its proportion of the vote that while serious is unlikely to pose a threat to his position. On the other hand, New Democracy, the main conservative opposition party, made significant gains. As well retaining its hold over the north of the country and the main cities, including Athens, where Dora Bakoyianni, the daughter of Constantine Mitsotakis, was elected mayor, the party gained across the country as a whole.

However, while New Democracy should have been celebrating at the end of the first round, when it became clear that they were on course to emerge the winners after the second round, the party was instead thrown into disarray. The strong showing by George Karatzeferis, the leader of the nationalist Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), in the election for the important post of prefect of Athens-Piraeus came as an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. Although New Democracy knew that it would be a tough race, they did not predict that Mr Karatzeferis would take 13.6% of the vote. This share effectively deprived the New Democracy candidate, Yiannis Tzannetakos, who got just 26.7% of the first round ballots, from going into the second round equal with Fofi Yennimata, the PASOK candidate, took a 40% share of the vote.

As expected, this strong showing by Laos in the first round appears to have played a large part in ensuring the eventual win by Ms Yennimata - by 56% to 44%. This win was extremely important for PASOK. In the months prior to the elections there had been speculation that PASOK might have been forced to go to the national polls if they faced a disaster. By winning Athens-Piraeus, as well as holding on to a number of other areas, such as Crete, Mr Simitis has been able to claim that the elections were not a referendum on his government but were simply 'local elections'.

New Democracy made a mistake in Athens-Piraeus

So why did Mr Karatzaferis do so well? The answer is that New Democracy allowed him to do so. The support given to Laos on this occasion had much more to do with a disappointment amongst many ND voters that Mr Tzannetakos was the party candidate for such an important post than to do with widespread disillusionment with ND generally. New Democracy can only blame themselves for their loss.

For a start, Mr Tzannetakos was not actually a member of the party. However this in itself is not unusual in Greek politics. What has created ill-feeling amongst many ND supporters is that fact that Mr Tzannetakos was an outsider who had been a strong supporter of the socialist government's successful attempt to remove religious affiliation from the identity cards. This issue created considerable debate in Greece in 2000, and it was this that gave the initial impetus to Mr Karatzaferis, a former New Democracy MP, who was expelled in late 2000 for disagreements with ND's leadership, to form his own party.

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