ATHENS — There may be no better place to understand Greek politics than the region of Achaia. Perched at the top of the Peloponnese peninsula west of Athens, it’s home to the country’s third-largest city — the bustling port city of Patras, famous for its annual Carnival parade, with its colorful costumes and floats.
It’s also the setting of a showdown between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the head of the radical-left Syriza party, and the man who will almost certainly become the Greece’s next prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the center-right New Democracy party.
In last month’s European Parliament election, Achaia — a Syriza stronghold — was one of just two constituencies in the country where New Democracy didn’t rake in the most votes. As Greeks return to the polls to elect a new government Sunday, Tsipras and Mitsotakis have both decided to lead their tickets in the region.
The outcome of the contest will determine not just Greece’s direction over the next four years. It will likely see the restoration of one of the country’s most powerful political families — after more than a decade of political and economic turmoil following the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
Many Greek voters blame the dominant political families for a legacy of patronage and the financial hardships of the past decade.
Greek politics, it seems, is incorrigibly dynastic. Since the end of military rule, leadership of the country has been passed around a handful of political families. And with New Democracy expected to receive enough votes to govern without a coalition partner, this election is set to mark their return.
Mitsotakis is a member of one of New Democracy’s two most important families. His father Konstantinos Mitsotakis served as prime minister in the early 1990s. His sister Dora Bakoyannis is a former foreign minister and former mayor of Athens. Her son Kostas Bakoyannis will become the city’s mayor in September.
“The staying power of the political dynasties is, of course, related with the outmoded organization and structure of Greek political parties,” said Aristides Hatzis, a law professor at the University of Athens. “They are still oligarchic, traditional, non-democratic and exclusive.”
New Democracy’s other important family is the party’s founder Konstantinos Karamanlis, a four-time prime minister. His nephew, Kostas Karamanlis led the country from 2004 to 2009, before being voted out of office at the outset of the government debt crisis. Now a member of parliament, Kostas Karamanlis made his first campaign speech in a decade last week.
Former Greek Prime Minister and President of Socialist International (SI) George Papandreou | Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images
Also standing in Achaia is a representative of Greece’s third political family, George Papandreou, who succeeded Kostas Karamanlis as prime minister and whose father and grandfather both served multiple stints in the country’s highest-elected office.
Papandreou, who led the center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and was prime minister until 2012, is a candidate for Movement for Change, a center-left political alliance in which Pasok is the biggest member. Even though many in the county blame Papandreou for the financial chaos and crippling austerity of the last 10 years, his party is expected to come in a distant third — behind New Democracy and Syriza — in Sunday’s election.
Disaffection
While some commentators liken Greece’s dynasties to the Kennedys in the United States, the more common view is a lot less flattering — many voters blame the dominant political families for a legacy of patronage and the financial hardships of the past decade.
Greeks are the most likely to describe their country as one where things don’t change very much regardless of who wins an election, according to a Pew Research Center study of 27 countries in May to August last year. They are also the ones most likely to describe their politicians as corrupt.
Syriza, which has governed Achaia since 2012 and Greece since 2015, has been the biggest beneficiary of this discontent. In the years following the outbreak of the crisis, the party surged from the far-left fringe to become one of the country’s dominant forces.
But years in power have taken their toll. During his time in government, Tsipras has overseen the implementation of painful reforms demanded by Greek creditors and struck an unpopular deal with North Macedonia over the country’s name. The mismanagement of deadly forest fires is another source of unpopularity.
Mitsotakis has pledged to be tough on corruption and nepotism if he wins, others in his party however may not see things the same way.
The party has also had its own brush with nepotism. In June, a prominent Syriza leader, Tasia Christodoulopoulou, the deputy speaker of parliament, said she would not stand in Sunday’s election after admitting she had used her connections to give her daughter a job in parliament.
Syriza “forgot how to be humble,” said George Tzogopoulos, a lecturer at the Democritus University of Thrace. “It thought all its mistakes, such as how it handled the wildfires of 2018, could be forgiven because New Democracy and Pasok were responsible for the country’s bankruptcy.”
When it comes to Mitsotakis, voters seem to be less worried about his family connections. “One could argue Greeks seem to forget and forgive easily,” said Hatzis, the law professor.
But, he added: “Mitsotakis was an outsider. He was elected not with the support of his party’s establishment but with the support of independent voters, especially coming from the center and the center left.”
Mitsotakis has pledged to be tough on corruption and nepotism if he wins. He said he won’t appoint family members, like his sister, to government office.
Others in his party however may not see things the same way.
When in 2017, the country’s longest-serving lawmaker Yiannis Tragakis, a New Democracy MP, announced he would step down from office and hand his seat to his son, Mitsotakis was quick to block the move.
This year, Tragakis, who also has a daughter, has since changed his mind about retiring from politics. He’s standing again in Sunday’s election.