The winds of political change are coursing through austerity-weary Greece, but a financial whirlwind may lurk round the corner.
All opinion polls on Sunday’s closely-watched national election agree: The radical left opposition Syriza party, which has vowed to rewrite the terms of Greece’s international bailout, enjoys a lead of at least 4 percentage points over Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ conservatives. To govern — in a historic first for the Greek left — it may need the backing of a smaller party, but most seem willing to oblige.
“I want this government to go. It has disappointed me,” said Babis Limnaios, 41, an Athens electrician who last voted in 2004 for the conservatives but will now back Syriza. “I want them to change everything — tax, health care, education.”
Communist-rooted Syriza has alarmed markets and investors with its talk of massive debt forgiveness and riding roughshod over the bailout deals. But the mood is less fraught than in the last national election in 2012, when many saw a Syriza victory as a precursor to a possible Greek exit from the eurozone, the 19 nations that now share the euro currency.
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A third option could be governing with the populist right-wing Independent Greeks, who agree with Syriza on need to end the austerity but disagree on about everything else.
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Raphael Kominis in Athens and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece, contributed to this story.
