The political life of most European countries, including Greece, has been put on ice.
Which is reasonable. Everything hinges on the (third) Gulf War and its outcome. The consequences (primarily economic) are already surfacing, but they cannot be fully foreseen or appraised until the fighting stops.
Four polls (Opinion, Alco, Interview, Pulse) conducted after the onset of hostilities recorded almost identical initial reactions from the Greek public.
People are anxious; they feel insecure and uncertain. They aren’t sure what lies ahead, and can’t predict how these events will collide with their daily lives.
As is normal in such circumstances, the usual repertoire of daily life is put on ice—which traditionally favors the incumbent governments. Party-political maneuvering or reflexive opposition is ill-suited to the moment; it fails to rise to the occasion.
How long will this hiatus last? No one knows and no one can say. But most importantly of all, no one can gauge the economic fallout of the war, which will arrive in a second wave and touch every household in the land.
In other words, the “window of opportunity” thrown open by the war is extremely precarious, and may prove fleeting. So if some are weaving electoral scenarios or nurturing opportunistic ambitions to seize the day, they are probably getting ahead of themselves; I suspect that few people would be ready to follow them.
In any case, the Prime Minister has categorically ruled out such a path. One cannot claim to be the guarantor of stability while simultaneously hunting out opportunities to stir things up.
But even so, this brief flash hides a deeper truth: that the Greek political scene is marked by an unprecedented political stability. Of course, there are marginal, reactive fluctuations, but there is no evidence of a radical realignment or a shift in the balance of power.
Naturally, all of this ignores the progression of a war of unknown duration whose impacts on the wider region remain a mystery.
So people are adopting a wait-and-see attitude, and not only in Greece. Putting everything on ice.
In France, they have their first round of municipal elections today, but there’s a sluggishness to proceedings which only the war can explain.
Especially since, at the risk of repeating myself, we haven’t seen the whole play yet, or even read the script.
So how can we know how it ends?
