By SUZANNE DALEY SEPT. 16, 2015
ATHENS — Inside campaign tents pitched by various political parties seeking to win over Greek voters here, including an immense one set up near Korai Square by the leftist Syriza party of the former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the chairs and tables were empty the other day.
The leaflets sat untouched in neat stacks, a sharp contrast to the days before Greece’s last election, in January, when noisy crowds milled late into the night, debating policy and their country’s future.
With new elections scheduled for Sunday and Greece’s relations with its European partners in a fragile state, this debt-ridden country has much on the line. The next prime minister will have to navigate the tricky politics of the European Union at a time when some European leaders have made clear that their patience for keeping Greece in the eurozone is running out.
The winner will inherit the responsibility of generating sustained economic improvement after years of near Depression-like conditions and of helping manage the unceasing flow of migrants through southern Europe.
But such stakes have hardly translated into election fervor. After months of turbulence, cliff-edge negotiations, a referendum and bank closures, many Greeks appear exhausted by the prospect of going to the polls for the fourth time in three years — their enthusiasm for the boyishly handsome Mr. Tsipras, 41, and his promises of change much diminished as they contemplate the future.
Mr. Tsipras was elected eight months ago as a leftist promising to stare down the country’s creditors and convince them that the austerity policies they had forced upon Greece had been counterproductive. Today, however, he is asking Greeks to re-elect him to implement a deal that would impose yet a new round of budget cuts and other unsettling policy changes, a deal he signed this summer in order to secure a badly needed aid package of 86 billion euros, or about $97 billion.
Angeliki Stergiou, 56, who was waiting for a friend near the campaign tents, rolled her eyes in their direction. “We hear all those campaign songs,” she said. “We shouted all those slogans. Again and again. But it made no difference. No one really believes what they say anymore.”
With so much of the country’s future being dictated by the bailout agreement, some voters are even questioning whether they are still living in a democracy — whether it really matters who will be in charge when so much is to be determined by the country’s creditors. Some 120 pieces of legislation will have to be passed before the end of the year, experts say.
“These are very real questions for everybody,” said Manos Giakoumis, an economist and analyst for the website Macropolis, pointing out that Mr. Tsipras, his leading opponent and three other party leaders have already signed off on the details of the bailout package. “It is true,” Mr. Manos said, “that we already know what the winner will be doing after the elections.”
It is also true, Mr. Giakoumis said, that the Greeks have, in many ways, run out of options, having already spanned the political spectrum since the start of the economic crisis, going from center-left to center-right before turning last January to the charismatic, and untested, Mr. Tsipras.
But after months of volatile negotiations, he was unable to hold his ground. Facing bank closures and formal proposals to push Greece out of the eurozone, Mr. Tsipras capitulated and negotiated for a bailout that virtually guarantees more misery for millions of Greeks.
At first, however, it appeared that Mr. Tsipras had somehow managed to keep his enormous popularity, as many voters applauded him for having fought the good fight. He resigned last month and called new elections in a bid to consolidate his power within his party and potentially win an outright majority that would free him of the need to govern in a coalition.
But recent polls, if they are to be believed — they have not accurately predicted any of the recent votes here — suggest that he could lose or at least fail to win a convincing victory.
They show the race as neck and neck, between Mr. Tsipras and the new leader of the center-right New Democracy party, Evangelos Meimarakis, 61. Unlike his predecessor, Antonis Samaras, Mr. Meimarakis has a man-of-the-people manner.
At the same time, however, the polls indicate that large numbers of voters — some polls say more than 10 percent – are undecided.
Mrs. Stergiou, a retired civil servant, said she would vote again for Mr. Tsipras, not with the same enthusiasm as in the past, but because “there is no one else” and because she still harbors the faint hope that “maybe, just maybe, he will safeguard the middle class.”
Mr. Tsipras called this election after he lost the allegiance of dozens of Syriza lawmakers who refused to vote for aspects of the bailout package. The measures passed, but only because other parties, eager to keep Greece in the eurozone, supported them.
By moving to drop his party’s renegades from the ballot, Mr. Tsipras hoped to attract center-left voters who would be more comfortable with a Syriza party purged of its more extreme fringe.
But Greeks are already feeling the pain of the conditions imposed by the new bailout, including new taxes and pension cuts.
Moreover, Mr. Tsipras’s failed efforts to resist further austerity seem to have carried a hefty price tag. While he negotiated, skittish depositors fled Greek banks. Recapitalizing them now may cost as much as €25 billion.
With so much being decided by the country’s creditors, the main candidates have struggled to come up with a narrative that appeals to voters. Both have suggested that there is room to renegotiate parts of the bailout deal, words that have prompted sharp warnings from some European leaders.
This month, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, warned that if the bailout agreement was not respected by the next government, the European Union’s resolve to keep Greece in the single currency bloc could change.
“This time we all need to realize that we are serious and for real, and we require respect of the arrangements and agreements that have been reached,” Mr. Juncker said. “If this time rules agreed to are not respected, the reaction of the European Union and the eurozone will be different.”
Mr. Meimarakis has argued that New Democracy, one of the two parties that governed Greece for much of the last 40 years, would bring experience.
Mr. Tsipras, however, has continued to focus on the notion that Greece needs to move beyond the parties that caused the financial crisis, saying they have been notoriously corrupt and driven by interest groups.
But to look around Athens, there are few hints that an election is even unfolding. There is little money for campaigning or posters, as the country’s traditional parties are hugely in debt. The national agenda, to a large degree, has already been set by Greece’s creditors.
“In lots of ways it is an absurd election,” said Costas Iordanidis, a columnist for the daily newspaper Kathimerini. “What we have to do is all decided.”
But Mr. Iordanidis and others suggest that the true question is whether either side can get a strong enough majority to enact the changes that Greece’s creditors are demanding. In the past, each government has lost parliamentary support as it pushed for changes sought by creditors.
Mr. Iordanidis said that a coalition of the two leading parties would achieve much-needed stability, but that this seemed unlikely given the personalities of both leaders.
At the empty Syriza tent, Nefeli Samiakou, 28, a member of the Syriza’s youth branch, said there were few visitors these days. “We are seeing a general slide toward indifference,” she said. “We are expecting far bigger abstention numbers. But there is still some hope out there, even if it is faded.”
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