ATHENS — In a vote that could strain Europe’s unity and rattle global markets, Greece on Sunday seems poised to embrace a once-shunned far-left party that vows to reject the six-year austerity plan imposed by creditors and renegotiate the southern European nation’s crippling foreign debt.
Four separate opinion polls this week say Syriza has the support of more than 30 percent of voters ahead of Sunday’s election, predicting a 4 to 6.5 percent lead over the ruling conservative New Democracy Party.
“There is a general moving of voters toward the radical left,” said Vassiliki Georgiadou, a professor of political science at Panteion University in Athens. “For the last one and a half years, almost all opinion polls [show] Syriza was the first party. This is the climate.”
Greece’s economy represents just 1.4 percent of the combined gross domestic product of the 28-nation European Union, but even the slight possibility of its defection from the bloc of countries using the euro could have huge consequences, both practical and symbolic, with the EU’s other struggling debtor nations watching Sunday’s vote closely.
Greece joined the European single currency in 2001 and — emboldened by a flood of cheap credit — went on a public spending spree that included $8 billion for the Summer Olympic Games in 2004.
But by 2010, the government was flat broke and, unable to depreciate its own currency as part of the eurozone, it had to seek international assistance to service its debt.
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Help came the way of a the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, known as the Troika, which offered a series of bailouts totaling $310.4 million.
But the bailouts came with a condition: austerity. Greece was forced to make huge cuts in public spending and sell off state assets. The result: The country’s economy has since contracted by more than a quarter since the sovereign debt crisis started in 2009, and popular discontent with the belt-tightening soared.
Today, unemployment hovers around 27 percent, and it has become common for once middle-class Greeks to seek help from soup kitchens and turn to private charity health clinics for treatment.
A free clinic run by the international charity Doctors of the World was set up to serve economic migrants and asylum seekers in a run-down section of central Athens.
But Christina Samartzi, who coordinates the domestic programs at the downtown clinic, said Greeks are forced off the rolls of socialized medicine after a year of unemployment and many can’t afford hospital fees.
In Athens biggest clinic, “we receive approximately 150 people per day and almost 40 percent are Greeks,” Ms. Samartzi said.
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Capitalizing on anger
Greece’s debt continues to equal close to 170 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Anti-austerity campaigners have capitalized on Greek anger since a majority of the foreign assistance money actually bailed out European banks, not the Greek treasury, yet Greek taxpayers are on the hook for this debt to European banks.
That’s led to the meteoric rise of Syriza, a leftist coalition which pledges public spending and standing up to international creditors.
The party’s leader, 40-year-old Alexis Tsipras, has pledged to reverse course and immediately spend $4.65 billion in public investments, breaking the commitments to austerity demanded by Germany and other creditor countries.
“Austerity has failed in Greece — it crippled the economy and left a large part of the workforce unemployed,” Mr. Tsipras, who was trained as a civil engineer before entering politics, wrote in a Jan. 20 op-ed published in the Financial Times. “Austerity is not part of the European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are.”
So far lenders have not backpedaled and it’s been a war of words between Greek leftists and international financiers. The International Monetary Fund’s chief Christine Lagarde warned Monday of “consequences” if European countries try to renegotiate their debts.
“Collective endeavors are welcome but at the same time a debt is a debt and it is a contract,” Ms. Lagarde told the Irish Times. “Defaulting, restructuring, changing the terms has consequences on the signature and the confidence in the signature.”
Greek’s incumbent Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his center-right New Democracy party have pulled no punches, warning a Syriza win would terrify international lenders and undermine Greece’s reputation in the marketplace.
“There’s no country in the world where nationalizations take place, except Venezuela and North Korea,” Mr. Samaras said at a Wednesday election rally in Thessaloniki.
Meanwhile some economists say Syriza’s platform to demand debt relief isn’t as extreme as it may sound, considering the country’s economy remains underwater.
“Most economists, looking at similar situations involving unsustainable levels of government debt, would recommend some negotiation to reduce debt levels,” said Oxford economics professor Simon Wren-Lewis. “The extreme position is therefore to refuse to negotiate.”
The doomsday scenario — that Greece would be expelled from the eurozone altogether and default entirely — remains remote, said Theodore Pelagidis, a professor of economics at the University of Piraeus in Greece.
“No one has an interest in Greece leaving the euro,” he said. “Those who say that there’s an incentive for Greece to be kicked out so that it is made an example for other nations in the euro area are wrong. Nor is there an incentive to allow anything to happen with Greek bank deposits.”
But it will be tough to convince some Greek voters like 30-year-old Dimitris Kaloyannidis, who works for a public university. Standing on Athens central Omonia Square, he said he’ll be voting for Syriza as it’s the best choice on offer.
“It’s a very difficult, historic situation for my country,” Mr. Kaloyannidis said.
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