Roundup: Pre-election campaign kicks off in Greece, uncertainty prevails

The pre-election campaign ahead of Greece's early national elections set for Sept. 20 kicked off with uncertainty over the outcome prevailing, according to pollsters, political analysts and media commentators in Athens.

Addressing a Radical Left SYRIZA party's nationwide meeting on Saturday, former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged Greeks to hand him a fresh strong mandate to change Greece and lead to the exit from the five year debt crisis which has brought the country to the brink of collapse and Grexit.

Tsipras stated that the dilemma the electorate will face on Sept. 20 will be to either move forward to the implementation of the third bailout his government sealed this summer or get stuck in the past with the "corrupt representatives of the old political system."

"Greece cannot turn back. We can only go forward," was the main motto during the meeting.

"They took us back. Now we are moving ahead," was the similar key motto in the first television advertisement of the main opposition conservative New Democracy party.

With both parties which dominate Greece's political landscape taking a stance in favor of the bailouts with lenders as the only credible way to keep Greece afloat and in the eurozone today, along with other smaller pro-euro parties, there seems to be only one certainty.

Regardless of which party comes first and which will be the junior partners in the new coalition administration, the next parliament will reflect again Greeks' strong commitment to the country's European course, as the President of the Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos has repeatedly stressed lately.

A string of opinion surveys released on Friday, as Pavlopoulos was signing the presidential decree for the formal declaration of the polls and the interim government led by Supreme Court chief Vassiliki Thanou was taking over, showed that both SYRIZA and ND will undoubtedly fall far shorter than securing absolute parliamentary majority.

The Leftists seem to hold a slim lead of just one or two percentage points over the conservatives within the margins of statistical error (22.2- 25.3 percent for SYRIZA against 21.2- 23.2 percent of votes for ND).

According to pollsters, the far-Right Golden Dawn party will most likely hold ground and remain the third largest party in the new assembly.

The anti-bailout Popular Unity party which was formed by SYRIZA defectors a week ago will be among the parties that will enter the parliament, while the Right-wing Independent Greeks party, Tsipras' junior partner in the previous administration, may fail.

One out of four Greeks at the moment has not made a decision on how he/she will cast his/her vote, but the trend is against the former premier indicting that he may lose the gamble he took when he resigned on Aug. 20 to force the snap polls.

His goal, according to analysts and media, was to strengthen his party's position after the schism with the hardliner pro-drachma "rebels" and form a more stable government to implement the program.

Tsipras has justified his step stating that he felt it was his moral obligation to allow Greek citizens to speak their mind on the bailout, since circumstances have dramatically changed in recent months.

In the Jan. 25 general elections, SYRIZA won by 36 percent of votes versus 28 percent for ND and formed Greece's first Left-led government, pledging to put an end to the harsh austerity policies implemented since 2010 under bailouts to avert default.

Tsipras and his team had promised radical sweeping changes within Greece and across Europe. Following seven months of stormy negotiations with lenders and the unprecedented introduction of capital controls in the debt laden country on June 29 to save the banking system of collapse, the Leftist leader signed the third Greek three-year bailout which foresees further austerity and reforms.

The former premier has admitted that he accepted a problematic new deal with a heavy heart, because he had "underestimated" lenders' reactions to SYRIZA's initial policy program. If he had not agreed to a painful bailout, as his predecessors, the alternative would be chaotic bankruptcy and Grexit, he said.

After SYRIZA's dramatic U-turn, Greek voters are actually called to decide who will better manage the implementation of the bailout, analysts noted. Tsipras now faces the disappointment and anger previous heads of governments faced in recent years.

He is already paying the "political cost of implementing a harsh austerity policy which runs against the high hopes and expectations he and his party had cultivated in previous years of an already exhausted populace," Nikos Chatzinikolaou, head of Real media group, underlined in a recent opinion article.

Chatzinikolaou urged Greeks to vote with a plan this time. "Greece needs a strong government that ensures our European course and guarantees a return to economic normalcy and growth. False promises and big words should be rejected at the ballot box," he stressed.

Regardless of the results of the ballot box on the evening on Sept. 20, Greece desperately needs consensus to move ahead, analysts and commentators added.

"After all of the adventures in the past few years and the traumatic consequences on the full spectrum of the political system, it is time they realized that the country needs a greater consensus and less fruitless and above all divisive conflicts," Vima (Tribune) underlined in an editorial.

The country is still hanging by a thread and has a long way to go before restoring growth and returning to normality.

The negative record of cross-party cooperation fuels concern that should a weak administration takes over and political instability prevails all the latest efforts to find the exit from the crisis will be derailed or wasted.

Under the recent agreement with creditors Greece can expect the launch of talks on debt relief later this autumn and more vital financing to boost growth. Further delays will cost dearly to the ailing economy. Enditem