The end of an era? Not really. A post-mortem of the Greek elections

On 6th May 2012, the Greek nation punished its political establishment for the country’s financial, economic and political meltdown. The election’s result put an end to the dominance of the two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, which had been taking turns at governing for the past three decades. Indeed, both parties together barely scraped in about 32 per cent of the vote, a catastrophic result when compared to their usual 80 per cent. Indicative of the fragmentation in political support, the elections on Sunday produced, for the first time in the country’s recent political history, a Parliament comprising seven different political parties ranging from Marxist-Leninists to neo-Nazis. As a result, it appears almost impossible for a viable coalition to emerge from the elections with a clear majority and implement the necessary structural reforms to overcome the current crisis.