Dear friends, good day to you!
“If citizens send a message of protest, on Monday there will be no one to receive it.” “On July 1st the country must have a strong government.”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis was clear from the TIF. He repeated his preference for single-party governments, argued that they can make serious decisions more quickly, and warned of the possibility that Greece could find itself with a caretaker government amid a difficult international juncture.
He is right about the risk. He is not necessarily right about the solution.
Because between the observation that the country needs a stable government and the conclusion that, therefore, it needs a self-reliant New Democracy government, there lies a huge political leap. And this is precisely the dilemma the prime minister is trying to pose to voters: either self-reliance or adventure.
Except that Greece does not belong to New Democracy and its stability cannot depend on the electoral percentage of one party.
A prolonged period of ungovernability after the next elections would certainly have economic consequences. Markets abhor uncertainty, investors postpone decisions, and an economy that needed years to restore its credibility has no reason whatsoever to put it to the test again.
In our neighborhood, however, the great issue at stake concerns not only the economy, but even more importantly national security. Because Greece is in a region where political stability is not only an economic advantage. It is also an element of its deterrent power.
Just on Friday, Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis acknowledged that we are in a “period of increasing tension” with Turkey, because of unilateral actions by Ankara. The marine parks, the “Blue Homeland,” the demilitarization of the islands, and the constant challenges to Greek sovereign rights did not disappear because in recent years there have been “calm waters.”
There is no need to assume that Turkey is waiting for a Greek political crisis in order to act. That would be alarmism. In international relations, however, it is not only real power that matters. What also matters is the opponent’s perception of it.
And a country without a stable political center may not be militarily weaker, but it may appear politically more vulnerable to a test of its reflexes.
A country that for weeks is seeking a government, with a caretaker prime minister, parties in a second pre-election campaign and political leaders counting votes, certainly does not cease to have Armed Forces, diplomacy and alliances.
It may, however, have less political room for immediate and decisive high-risk choices. And history has already taught us how dangerous an incident in the Aegean can become when military tension meets political uncertainty.
Thus, then, a real risk does not cease to be real because it is used coercively. Nor does it become the partisan property of the one who invokes it.
National security cannot be turned into an argument of the type “either self-reliance or adventure.” Nor can the possibility of ungovernability be used to indicate to the citizen which party he ought to vote for.
If the ballot boxes do not produce self-reliance—and today nothing guarantees that they will— the political system must be capable of producing a government. This is where the responsibility of the electorate ends and that of the parties begins.
Democracy is not exhausted at the ballot box. It is also judged by whether the political system can, after the ballot box, turn the popular verdict into a functional government. Because the day after the elections the party lines will continue to exist. The Aegean too.
Governability is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing concept. It is a national necessity. And the homeland is greater than any party — even the one that will come first in the elections.