Workers and youth in Greece delivered an historic death blow to the present bourgeois parties and to the whole political two-party system in Sunday’s general election.
The combined vote of the conservatives and of the social-democrats, who imposed the EC-IMF dictated ‘Accord’ of barbaric austerity measures, reached just 32 per cent, a colossal drop from the 78 per cent of the vote the two parties got in the 2009 general election.
The two parties, which last September formed a coalition government headed by banker Lucas Papademos as Prime Minister and were publicly supported by EC and IMF leaders, have failed to win the 151 parliamentary seats needed to form a government in the 300 seats Vouli (Greek parliament).
This is a truly nightmare result for the overlords of Greece, the EC and the IMF.
It expresses the revolutionary strength and fury of the workers and youth in Greece and is certainly part of the fight of the European working class against the capitalist counter-revolution.
The EC-IMF overlords are busy in reactionary machinations to force the formation of a new Greek government which will carry on with the Accord of wage and pension cuts and mass sackings.
But such is the force of the anti-EC-IMF Accord general election result, despite the electoral system, which provides the top party in the polls with 50 parliamentary seats, that the formation of such a reactionary government will lead to mass strikes, demonstrations and occupations.
The election result will give a huge boost to the national strikes against the barbaric austerity measures already declared for 15 May by several trade unions in defence of collective agreements.
Thus the first task of the EC-IMF overlords and of the Greek bourgeoisie is to stop a general strike movement developing.
To that end, they will try to bring into existence a ‘grand coalition government’, which ostensibly will ‘re-negotiate’ the EC-IMF Accord.
The conservatives of the New Democracy party came top of the poll getting 18.8 per cent of the vote and winning 108 parliamentary deputies.
Their leader, Antonis Samaras, has three days to try and form a grand coalition ‘national’ government; this is the scheme proposed by the utterly defeated leader of PASOK Vagelis Venizelos.
The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) came second with 16.8 per cent of the vote from just 4.5 per cent in 2009.
SYRIZA is now the top party in all the four Greek metropolitan cities of the capital Athens, and of Piraeus, Thessaloniki and Patras.
The social-democrats of PASOK suffered a colossal defeat getting just 13.2 of the vote, down from 44 per cent in 2009. PASOK was almost wiped out in all working class areas in the main cities. The port and industrial city of Piraeus did not elect a single PASOK parliamentary deputy.
The right-wing Independent Greeks party, which split from the conservatives, got 10.5 per cent of the vote having campaigned against the EC-IMF Accord.
Both SYRIZA and the independent Greeks parties say that Greece must remain in the Eurozone.
The Democratic Left party which was formed a few months ago by ex-SYRIZA and ex-PASOK members, also campaigned against the EC-IMF Accord and got six per cent.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) failed to make any considerable gains. The national vote for the KKE reached 8.5 per cent, one per cent up from 2009, but the party lost tens of thousands of votes in the working class districts of all the metropolitan areas.
The racist LAOS party, which participated in the first coalition government that imposed the EC-IMF Accord, got less than three per cent the limit for entering the Vouli.
