Sun­day, June 17th was a his­toric day. Even Google doo­dled about it:

On the 17th, Greece held a sec­ond set of elec­tions, six weeks after the pre­vi­ous set in which no party received a majority.

So here’s what hap­pened as I under­stand it. All this infor­ma­tion comes from peo­ple we’ve spo­ken to and arti­cles I’ve read. Please note I have sim­pli­fied some aspects of this, but my hope is that in doing so I have not detracted from the essence of the particulars.

In Novem­ber 2011, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter George Papan­dreou called for a ref­er­en­dum to be held over Greece’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment the euro. Papan­dreou later called off the ref­er­en­dum due to polit­i­cal pres­sure and as a result he resigned. This ush­ered in an interim gov­ern­ment headed by Lucas Papademos which lasted until elec­tions in May 2012.

The May elec­tions resulted in no polit­i­cal party win­ning the major­ity of seats in Par­lia­ment, which is required by the Greek con­sti­tu­tion to form a gov­ern­ment. The three largest par­ties had an oppor­tu­nity to form a sim­ple major­ity by align­ing but they did not do so. The con­sti­tu­tion called for Par­lia­ment to be dis­solved and new elec­tions sched­uled, and these elec­tions hap­pened on June 17^th.

This elec­tion, as Greeks described it, put to vote the public’s com­mit­ment to the euro. Vot­ers had a hard choice between con­tin­u­ing with harsh aus­ter­ity mea­sures or the unknowns of return­ing to the drachma. Regard­less of their votes, social unrest and eco­nomic insta­bil­ity are here to stay.

The three main polit­i­cal par­ties:
New Democ­racy is a pro-bailout/austerity con­ser­v­a­tive party.
Syriza is a rad­i­cal left, anti-bailout/austerity party. The word “syriza” ref­er­ences a Greek word mean­ing “back to the roots”.
Pasok is a social­ist party, which had long ruled Greece.

In the May elec­tion, New Democ­racy received 19%, Syriza received 17%, and Pasok received 13%.

In Sunday’s elec­tion, New Democ­racy received 30%, Syriza received 27%, and Pasok received 12%.

Both elec­tions reflect a minor­ity vic­tory for New Democ­racy, which is a party notion­ally com­mit­ted to keep­ing Greece in the euro by sus­tain­ing a national aus­ter­ity pro­gram.  This pro­gram has reduced the nation’s econ­omy by 20% since 2007, and promises to cut wages and pen­sions by another 15% next year.

A Greek polit­i­cal pun­dit said that for Syriza, this was the best pos­si­ble out­come. They didn’t win which means they won’t have to run the coun­try, but they proved that they are a viable oppo­nent to ND. Syriza, founded in 2004, was not taken seri­ously until a cou­ple of years ago, and now their pop­u­lar­ity is undeniable.

If Syriza had won an out­right major­ity, Greece would have likely exited the euro zone and defaulted on its loans. Aban­don­ing the euro surely sounds dra­matic and it would have likely sent the world finan­cial sys­tem into tur­moil, but it’s impor­tant to note that Greece has a his­tory of cor­rup­tion and tax-evasion that seems to have bur­dened its EU partners.

We’ve been told that Greece will run out of money by the end of July. Can’t quite wrap my mind around that. Sunday’s elec­tions added to their debt, and if a third set of elec­tions is called for, that will surely run them dry. Let alone all other costs that are, you know, nec­es­sary to run a country.

Since no party won a major­ity, no sin­gle party will have enough seats to gov­ern by itself and New Democ­racy must now form a coali­tion. On Sun­day evening, Pasok (social­ist party) announced that they would not join a coali­tion with ND (center-right) unless Syriza (rad­i­cal left) did so. This coali­tion, if I’m not mis­taken, is sup­posed to be formed by tomor­row, Wednes­day the 20^th. If they do not form a coali­tion, they will sched­ule a third set of elec­tions in six weeks.

For­tu­nately for us (and pri­mar­ily our wor­ried par­ents) this means that at least for the next 35 days in this global sem­i­nar, the euro will remain Greece’s cur­rency and the drachma will not make a come­back. Greece’s trou­bles are cer­tainly still present but they are not being dealt with until they have a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment again and it’s not clear whether that will hap­pen dur­ing our time here.

Per­haps the strangest part of being in Athens dur­ing tumul­tuous times is the fact that we’re simul­ta­ne­ously learn­ing about Greek his­tory, simul­ta­ne­ously vis­it­ing the Acrop­o­lis, simul­ta­ne­ously (and con­stantly) hear­ing from Greeks how there’s was the city that fash­ioned democ­racy. It seems an unfor­tu­nate para­dox that we can so praise their ori­gins and treat their cur­rent state as a cancer.

Hope­fully this served as a clear, inof­fen­sive, and rel­a­tively con­cise expla­na­tion of the Greek polit­i­cal climate.

Over and out,
Katherine