Elections and Fires: Background Part I

We arrived in Greece shortly after a summer of extremely difficult forest fires and a week after the national election. For some background: Greece has a very dry climate (although certainly not as dry as the UAE) with dense, low-lying vegetation. Some of the plants contain resin, which catches on fire very easily. Forest fires are a habitual summer hazard.

What made this summer’s fires particularly unique was not only their devastation but also the mystery surrounding their cause and the lag in government response. In many cases, evidence of arson, such as bottles of gasoline, was found at the site of the fire. The long-standing (and in my opinion, plausible) explanation is that developers were trying to get around a provision of Greek property law that makes it illegal to build on forest land. The (now former) Minister of Public Order, Vyron Polydoras, claimed that Greece faced an “asymmetric threat” and that the fires were the result of terrorism. To me, this seems a little bit like a play for aid from the United States, a more extreme version Uribe labeling the FARQ terrorists. It’s a magic word. Another explanation—heightened because the fires took place during election season—was that the fires were started by an opposition party in order to throw the results. This rumor became so prevalent that the leader of PASOK—the main opposition party—accused the government of perpetuating the story that his party had started the fires.

The other source of controversy surrounding the fires was the delayed government response. The fires started in June, but it wasn’t until August 25^th that the government declared a national state of emergency, asked for EU help and sent troops to the areas affected by the fires. My impression is that aid to fire victims and refugees has been immediate and generous.

Greece has five political parties that are large enough to win seats in parliament. The majority party, New Democracy, is a center-right party that won the most recent election by 4%. New Democracy had parliamentary control before the election too, so there wasn’t a change of Prime Minister. The major center left party is PASOK, which had control for most of the eighties and nineties, as well as earlier in this decade. To the right of New Democracy is the Popular Orthodox Party, which gained ten seats in the last election, its first term in parliament. To the left of PASOK are SYRIZA and the KKE, which both gained seats. The two major results of the election: 1) minor parties gained seats, perhaps indicating disenchantment with the government response to the election and 2) PASOK was expected to only lose by 2%. The 4% margin has caused lots of turmoil within the party and there may be a change in leadership.