By Jack Duffy

PARIS (MNI) – After France and the Netherlands, is it Greece’s turn
to raise an angry fist toward Brussels?

Greek voters go to the polls on May 6 to choose a government to
succeed that of the technocrat Lucas Papademos. Opinion polls suggest
the vote could be another cry of protest — after the surge in the
extreme right in the first round of French presidential elections and
the collapse of the Dutch government — against the austerity-dominated
policies that have driven most of the Eurozone in recession.

But the Greek election poses a much greater danger, most of all for
Greece itself. If voters see it as a chance to take revenge on the
governing parties who accepted the austerity measures in return for two
successive bailouts, then Athens could well be pushed out of the euro.

“For the first time in Greece, the main divisions in this election
have nothing do with left and right,” said Costas Panagopoulos, of the
Athens-based polling agency ALCO. “The major divisions have to do with
the loan agreement, those that are for it and those who are against.”

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Greeks want to remain
in the euro but are also enraged by the austerity that promises to
shrink the economy by another 5% this year. The key question,
Panagopoulos says, is whether the anger that shows up in opinion polls
will translate into actual votes on May 6, producing a government that
is too weak to live up to its European commitments.

As many as 11 different parties will contest the May 6 election.
New Democracy, led by Antonis Samaras, leads with about 22% and the
Socialist party Pasok, led by the former finance minister Evangelos
Venizelos, is second with about 19%. Either party would have to win 35%
to 40% of the vote to form a government on its own. Of the 11 parties,
more than half do not support the bailout agreement.

“Eight to 10 parties could enter parliament,” said Janis
Emmanouilidis, a senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre in
Brussels. “The two main parties may well have a majority, but it will
not be very strong, especially given the harsh measures the new
government will have to take in the months ahead,” Emmanouilidis said.

Among those measures will be E11 billion in additional budget cuts
that the government needs to identify by June.

Panagopoulos, the pollster, said that New Democracy and Pasok are
hoping to get above 50% of the vote in order to give the bailout program
political legitimacy. He estimates, however, that 55% could go to
anti-bailout groups ranging from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party on the
right to the Greek Communist party on the left.

But some analysts, Emmanouilidis of the European Policy Centre
among them, suspect that the big protest vote suggested by the opinion
polls may not ultimately translate into real votes.

“There is the realization now that Greece’s European partners won’t
provide help forever under any circumstances,” Emmanouilidis said.
“There is the fear that a Eurozone exit is indeed possible and that fear
could give the main parties a boost on May 6.”

But there is no way of telling whether fear or anger will win out
on election day. As Europe struggles for stability and tinkers with a
“growth pact” to match its “fiscal compact,” the angry voter may prove
to be its biggest source of instability.

“I’ve never seen an election quite like this. It is very quiet with
almost a sense of numbness among the parties,” said Roman Gerodimos,
founder of the Greek Politics Specialist Group, a non-profit think
tank. “The overriding sense is that people want to protest the state of
their own pockets and that makes the outcome very unpredicable.”

(EuroView is an occasional column written by Market News
International editorial staff. Any views expressed are solely those of
the writer)

–Paris newsroom. +33142715540; jduffy@marketnews.com

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