Greeks see reasons for hope and fear amid the political ruins

The Guardian: Athens has become the centre of a storm as radical parties on the left and right challenge the old two-party system

here are reminders of Greece's deep democratic roots everywhere you turn in Athens. The grand stone parliament building that makes up one side of Constitution Square, formerly a royal palace, is the headquarters of a modern democratic tradition stretching back to 1830, while the ancient remains around it mark the birthplace of democracy as a word and an idea.

 

Now screeds of furious graffiti swearing fealty to a host of newly-empowered fringe parties, from anarchists to neo-Nazis, are rising like a multicoloured tide around the foundations of Athenian architecture. In the working class district of Gazi, the goddess Athena has been painted standing tall, a Molotov cocktail in one hand and the red flag of revolution in another.

 

Stephanos Pesmazoglou, a political science professor at Panteion University in Athens, fears that the political order which began with the collapse of the military junta in 1974 is now coming to an end, without any clarity over what might follow in its wake.

 

"It is disintegrating quite clearly," Pesmazoglou said. "There is a mixture of populism and nationalism that is definitely undermining the essence of democracy. The elections on Sunday were the first earthquake and, if there are going to be another round of elections in June, we will feel the aftershock. There will be a second earthquake."

 

If there is any consensus in the fractious post-election atmosphere, it is that politics as usual is no longer functioning. The scale of the problems – unemployment at more than 21%, youth unemployment above 50%, public service salaries down by 40% and suicides up 22% in just two years – have overwhelmed the political system's ability to cope.

 

Yet despite the depth of the crisis, the mood in the many cafes of Athens has lightened since the elections, rejoicing in the humbling of the two party machines that had taken it in turns to run the country. The conservative New Democracy, which had expected to win outright, still came first but won less than 19%. The centre-left Pasok, the dominant political force in post-war Greece, won only 13% and was relegated to third place by a coalition from the more radical left, Syriza.

 

For Greeks of all ages, it is as if a long-festering truth has finally been blurted out at the dinner table in front of the stern family patriarchs. Whatever happens, nothing will ever be the same again.

 

"It is a mixture of elation and fear, and the balance in the mix changes with every passing day," Pesmazoglou said.

 

That volatile mix of giddiness and foreboding has led some to start referring to the new era, only half-jokingly, as Weimar-am-Mittelmeer – Weimar on the Mediterranean – a nod towards German chancellor Angela Merkel's leading role in insisting that austerity and fiscal rectitude should be the linchpins in the European bailout package.

 

It has more to do, however, with the meteoric rise of a previously tiny neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, which won 7% of the vote, compared with a barely perceptible 0.3% in 2009, bringing it into parliament for the first time with 21 seats.

 

Its actions this week have dominated the media. Journalists attending Golden Dawn's post-election press conference were ordered to stand for the party's leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos; those who refused were thrown out. He embarked on a blustering diatribe, hitting out at the "yellow press" and branding the coalition government of the two traditional parties a "bailout mafia".

 

He said his party would fight for "a country that will not be a social jungle because of the millions of illegal immigrants they brought into the country without asking us". He shook his fist at the cameras and concluded with a chilling warning for his enemies: "The new Golden Dawn of Hellenism is rising. For those who betrayed their homeland, the time has come to fear. We are coming."

 

The time for fear arrived some time ago for some. On Tuesday, three immigrants from south Asia were beaten up by blackshirted Golden Dawn thugs in the Athens district of Kallithea. In Gazi the next morning, blackshirts on motorbikes dumped leaflets outside a row of gay bars, warning they would be the next targets.

 

In the central Athens district of Aghios Panteleimonas, Golden Dawn has been a powerful presence for some time – and it shows. The cream stucco of a local school is drowning in xenophobic graffiti demanding "Foreigners Out" and promising "Tomorrow belongs to us". The wall has become a battleground: anarchists have tried to write over the fascist slogans – changing Nazi to Xazi (Greek for stupid), for example – until the conflicting spray-canned exclamations have cancelled each other out and become an indecipherable mess.

 

The message is clearer in front of the large orthodox church which gives the district its name. In huge blue and white letters someone has written: "Foreigners out of Greece, Greece for Greeks alone" on the square in front of the church door. The slogan is meant to be read every day by the local priest who set up a soup kitchen for immigrants in the church basement. The gate to what was once an extensive play area on the square has been padlocked, leaving weeds to grow among the climbing frame and swings.

 

Kostas, an elderly local man who declined to provide his full name, said the "community" had closed the park in 2009, because it had become "over-run" by foreigners.

 

"This is the initiative of local people to address the problem the state has failed to address. The neighbourhood has turned into a storage area [for immigrants]," Kostas said. "The park turned into a place for illegal immigrants, cooking and washing there. The whole square was a giant latrine."

 

Sitting on a nearby bench, an army veteran with an orange-striped polo shirt, who gave his name only as Konstantinos because he said he feared reprisals, explained why he voted for Golden Dawn.

 

"They escort me to the bank and the shops and then back home again. People have become afraid to go out on their own because of the crime. But every time I want to go to bank or shops, there is a phone number I can call, and they come," Konstantinos said. Asked whether such security should be provided by the local authorities, he asked: "Where are the police? Police arrest immigrant prostitutes and let them out of the back door of the police station. I have a friend who was attacked 10 times in his shop. He was robbed and punched in the face. He had to close the shop."

 

A number of businesses across the road have closed. One of those still open is a Bangladeshi-run hairdresser, but the barber complained of frequent attacks on immigrants by fascist thugs at the bus stop outside.

 

"Every day something happens. We are good people. It is the other groups which create the problems, and we get the backlash," the barber said, adding that he was investigating whether it was feasible to return to Bangladesh.

 

As the crisis continues and grows, the political colouring of different Athens districts has deepened. If Aghios Panteleimonas has become Golden Dawn territory, Exarchia is home to a disparate range of anarchist and radical leftist groups, who have increasingly shrugged off the authority of the muncipal government. When the municipality set about turning a vacant lot in the centre of the district into a car park, residents dug up the asphalt and planted a garden in its place.

 

Elsewhere in Exarchia, there are co-operatives providing free food and clothes to the poor, and giving lessons in farming, Greek and foreign languages. Activists have taken over a cafe in a former national insurance building, where some of the most celebrated bloggers and tweeters of the demonstrations meet to theorise and argue.

 

Theodora Oikonomides, who tweets regular update on the party talks under the handle @IrateGreek, said: "We are holding our breath. There is a sense of anticipation for all those who were fed up with the corrupt two-party system. Greek politics without Pasok and New Democracy is a whole new world. But there is also worry about what Golden Dawn is going to do? Is Syriza overplaying its hand? Deep down, no one knows what is going to happen next."

 

A well-known blogger known as Pitsirikos, "the Kid", said he voted for a far leftist group called Antarsya on Sunday but was considering throwing his weight behind Syriza, a coalition of 15 green and radical groups, and its 37 year-old leader, Alexis Tsipras.

 

"Tsipras has shown that the two-party system can be broken," Pitsirikos said. "That gives us some amount of hope."

 

What unites the new electoral forces from either end of the political spectrum is contempt for the old system. Former ministers from Pasok and New Democracy are now unable to venture into the streets without being cursed and pelted with yoghurt, a peculiarly Greek form of political assault.

 

From both left and right, the politicians from the two traditional parties are seen as creatures of a remote economic elite which has lost touch with ordinary people.

 

Driving north out of central Athens to the wealthy suburb of Kifisia, it is easy to see why people might have that impression. The air becomes cooler, the streets become visibly cleaner, and groceries and supermarkets give way to boutiques.

 

During the election, a rash of placards appeared, borrowing from a famous British poster, urging people to "Keep calm and vote". The poster in a Kifisia shop window urges passersby to keep calm and buy handbags.

 

Much of the wealth is built on shipping. In its mega-rich shipowners, Athens had the first globalised elite of the modern age, and it is an elite that has fought hard to maintain its position. It sponsors the two big parties and, in return, has managed to evade taxes for generations, while keeping much of its wealth in Swiss bank accounts.

 

"Other European countries have a social contract in which I pay taxes and you, the government, provide services," said George Papaconstantinou, the former Pasok finance minister. "We have a warped social contract in which I vote for you and you promise to hire my kids in the public sector and don't make me pay taxes. What we are seeing is the breakdown of that clientelist system."

 

Papaconstantinou is an LSE-trained economist who worked for the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development before running for office. On becoming finance minister in 2009, he tried to challenge the fiscal impunity of the Greek rich. He earned the wrath of the professional classes by ordering the finance ministry to pry into their bank accounts and negotiate with the Swiss authorities over investigating offshore funds. In the end, he ran out of time.

 

Former finance ministry officials said Papaconstantinou's efforts to reform the system were constantly undermined by Pasok mandarins who had a vested interest in maintaining it intact. In any case, under the European Union's austerity measures, the tax base withered faster than he could widen its scope.

 

"You have a state that doesn't know what it is spending and a complete breakdown of the social contract. Salaries in the public sector were cut by 40%, so you have a demoralised workforce which then refuses to work," Papaconstantinou said. "So with an already badly functioning public sector … you get an explosive situation in which people are radicalised."

 

Papaconstantinou became such a focus for resentment he was moved aside in June 2011 but his successor, Evangelos Venizelos, now the Pasok leader, fared no better. And now there is a dearth of ideas about how Greece can stay in Europe, the will of more than 70% of the electorate, without risking complete social breakdown.

 

"It's like a multiple choice exam where all the answers are wrong," said Nick Malkoutzis, the deputy editor of the English-language version of the Kathimerini website. "You are asking a whole generation of politicians, which has been in power for 20 to 30 years, to throw everything they knew out of the window … The situation demands that this crop of politicians rise above usual stature. I am not sure that is something they can do."

 

Julian Borger in Athens