Letter from Athens: complex process for Greek elections

By Christos Panayiotides

A lot of friends have asked me questions about the new Greek voting system, which they are struggling to understand. Here is my response in a nutshell, which will hopefully clear the confusion ahead of the elections on May 21.

While in government in 2016, Alexis Tsipras (Syriza-Anel coalition) modified the Greek constitution and introduced a new voting system, under which the 300 MPs in the Greek parliament are elected on the basis of a “proportional” system. This means that, if a party secures 10 per cent of the total valid votes cast, it will elect 300 x 10% = 30 MPs or 30 “plus something” MPs. The “plus something” relates to the fact that a party needs to secure at least 3 per cent of the total valid votes to get into parliament.

As a consequence, the votes which relate to the 3 per cent election threshold end up being allocated to the parties that have entered the House. It follows that to secure the election of 151 MPs (out of the total of 300) a party needs to secure almost 50 per cent of the total valid votes cast. In practice, this is impossible.

It follows that a proportional voting system effectively results in the inability of any political party to form a government on its own and forces the formation of coalition governments. This is the case even if a party succeeds in securing a percentage of votes that approaches the 50 per cent mark. The result is political uncertainty and instability. Such proportional election rules tend to corrupt the political system by encouraging the formation of “unnatural” alliances (such as that between Syriza and Anel).

These concerns prompted the New Democracy government (in power over the past four years) to modify the constitution, by introducing the new rules that are currently applicable. To start with, the applicable election basis remains that of “proportional” representation. Let us say that the election results of the new process are: party A gets 75 MPs; party B gets 55 MPs; party C gets 21 MPs and the remaining parties get 149 MPs. In such a case, the president of the Republic would first ask the leader of party A to form a government capable of securing a vote of confidence of 151 MPs. If this attempt fails to produce a government, the leader of the second party in line is called upon to form a government and then the leader of the third party is asked to have a go. Each attempt must be completed within three days. One last attempt is made to form a joint government by all the parties represented in parliament. Failing this, new elections are called, which must be held within 30 days.

This means that the second round follows the first round within about 1½ months. In this second round – if there is one – a bonus of 20 seats is given to the first party which secures 25 per cent of the valid votes plus one seat for every 0.5 per cent over and above the 25 per cent threshold. Thus, a maximum bonus of 50 seats will be given on reaching the 40 per cent threshold [(40% x 300) + 20 + (15/0.5)] = 170. This implies that a party which secures 37 per cent of the total valid votes will be able to form a government without the need to form an alliance with any other party [(37% x 300) + 20 + (12/0.5)] = 155.

The deliberations leading to a second round are likely to last a couple of weeks, i.e., they will extend over the fortnight ending on Sunday, June 4. Thus, if we end up with a second round, the day on which the new elections will be held will most likely be Sunday, July 2.

I hope that I have been able to help you comprehend this new, somewhat complex, Greek election process.

Christos Panayiotides is a freelance journalist