Dear friends, good day to you!
Perfect storms are not born from a single event. They are born when different fronts open at the same time and begin to feed one another.
That is where Greece also seems to be heading.
High prices and the new rise in energy prices are burdening a society that has not yet absorbed the losses of previous years. And indeed at a time when trust in the political system is declining, anti-systemic and extreme forces are finding receptive ears and in Greek-Turkish issues points of friction are once again appearing.
From the defensive shielding of the islands and the strategic relationship between Greece and Israel to the much more immediate test of the electrical interconnection with Cyprus.
None of this means that Greece is inevitably heading toward a new crisis. The problem lies in the fact that all these fronts are opening at roughly the same time and that one can act as a multiplier of the other.
First and most important is the economic one.
Growth continues and unemployment has fallen, but these offer little comfort to the citizen when their disposable income is under pressure and the distance between the economic indicators and their daily life is growing, as dear G. Papanikolaou aptly points out in his article yesterday.
It is no coincidence that in a poll by Palmos Analysis, which saw the light of day yesterday, 63% place high prices and purchasing power among the two most important criteria for their vote, while 31% do not consider any of the three largest parties more capable of dealing with high prices.
The new energy wave is coming, in fact, after a long period of price increases. A new deterioration does not only hit the family budget, but fuels discontent and strengthens the belief that growth is not reaching the pockets of the many.
What this distance can mean we see in Germany. On the same day, the AfD prevailed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and in Berlin Die Linke emerged first. Political forces with completely different starting points, but with one common denominator in the results: the significant retreat of the traditional parties of power.
Greece is not Germany. However, the distancing of a significant part of society from the traditional political forces is visible here as well. In Palmos's voting intention, the three largest parties gather just 50.7%, while the "gray zone" stands at 16.5%.
In a hypothetical scenario of a party by Ilias Kasidiaris, 8% say they would "definitely" vote for it and another 9% that they "might" do so. This is not voting intention for an existing party, but the finding is hard to ignore.
To this already charged environment are added the Greek-Turkish issues. Ankara is bringing back the demand for the demilitarization of the islands and is now linking its stance to the strategic cooperation between Greece and Israel. An even more immediate crash test is the cable, as the resumption of surveys for the GSI may once again bring into confrontation in the field the Greek positions on the continental shelf and the delimited EEZ with the claims of the "Blue Homeland".
The precedent of Kasos exists.
If, therefore, to a society already pressured by high prices and distrustful of the political system there is added a serious Greek-Turkish tension, the mix becomes even more dangerous. Issues of national security and sovereignty can easily offer additional space to those who invest in anger, fear, and nationalism.
And all this while the country has, in practice, entered a long pre-election period. That is, at the worst possible moment for managing such a situation, since when government and opposition begin to measure every decision with an eye on the ballot box, sobriety, flexibility, and planning risk giving way to the immediate political cost.
The perfect storm is not here yet. But its clouds have begun to gather.