Just a few minutes ago the final outcome of the Greek Parliamentary elections was on TV. That was really fast: two hours after the poll stations were closed. And this with a completely new voting system. The rest of the world can take an example from Greece!
I wrote an hour ago that Nea Dimokratía had 146 of the 300 seats in Parliament. They have for sure won the elections and big time too as Donald Trump would say, but they have 145 seats, almost 41% of the vote. That means they will need to form a coalition with another party. So they will probably go for a second round in the end of June.
Not only because of the speed of the results, but also because any even rumour of fraud whatsoever was totally absent. People voted on brand new tablets and it was even possible to give provisional outcomes about how many percent of voters had cast their vote. A miracle in these confused times! Poll stations opened at 7AM, closed at 7PM and the results were there within two hours. No mail-in ballots, no elections for days and days where fraud can be committed so easily, nothing. Everything well organised, clear and fair.
Of course the first few hours early in the morning some of those brand new voting tablets had some issues here and there and the first results didn’t come as planned at 10AM but at 2PM. Yet no other country has such quick in-between results, so it is still an enormous achievement. Bravo for Greece, I am proud of my country. Everybody always thinks we are just a bunch-a chaotic bunglers and hey yes the word ‘chaos’ is Greek, isn’t it? Well, the word ‘systima’ which means system or order is also Greek and so is ‘prógramma’ or programme. See?
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More good news
There is more good news, because honestly I have never been anywhere near being a fan of the right-wing party Nea Dimokratía, but they have done a terrific job during the past four years. What is true must be said! After 33 years of adversity Greece is finally on the map again as a trustworthy country in which businesses can invest and the economy shot up like a rocket. No, like those starships in Star Wars that go on Warp Speed. That is how fast the Greek economy started moving upwards again after the Mitsotakis government got help from the Chinese giant company Cosco, that had already bought the biggest part of the port in Piraeus in 2016. The then governing party SYRIZA didn’t do anything with that fact though.
It was the present government that started up plans for re-establishing ship building companies there in order to get Greece moving again. There were a few very good touristic seasons and some help from the EU for the Covid crisis that helped to pay back enough of Greece’s debt to the European Union to get freed from the label of junk economy. The government also made sound deals with Turkey about immigrants and so the greatest leaks in the Greek economy have been mended. In their next round they are going to set deals with public workers, who are far too many and who work too few years and too few hours per week. This is going to give some real firework in the years to come, you can bet on that, but I think the Greek citizens have had enough of grumpy and unmotivated public workers anywhere you go. So hopefully they will stand behind their government when things get tough.
There is one thing though: Nea Dimokratía clearly won the elections, but it didn’t have enough votes to cover half of the seats in the Parliament counting 300 heads. They won 146 seats and so they can´t govern on their own. The second and third parties are the communistic SYRIZA and the socialistic PASOK, who aren’t really the best partners to govern with. There is a fourth party called I Ellinikí Lýsi or The Greek Solution. It is very right-wing and won 16 seats. In Greece a government must be formed within a few days, so somewhere this week we will know what and how the new government will be. Now there are six parties in the Parliament, but the new Parliament will count five parties. The ones mentioned and the also communists KKE, making Greece probably the only country in the world with two communistic parties.
If you understand Greek, you can see and hear the news on the video underneath. I already wish you a great week!
