Elections are important institutions that define the national narrative. I'm very interested to see what happens in Greece after this, given a decidedly leftist party is in the lead, and one that's hostile to a lot of EU economic policy which has kept Greece in grinding indebtedness for the last several years.
The leader of the left-wing SYRIZA Party, Alexis Tsipras, claimed a jubilant victory in Athens, Greece, on Sunday. SYRIZA took 36.5 percent of the electorate compared with the 27.7 percent for Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy Party. This is according to official election data. The far-right Golden Dawn placed third at at 6.3 percent, followed by To Potami garnering 5.9 percent of the vote party...
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LEO PANITCH, PROF. OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, YORK UNIVERSITY: ...But he made it very clear this was a victory against what he called the elite and the oligarchs in Greece. I think people need to understand that this is a positive outcome of a clear class struggle.
PERIES: So what does he mean by the oligarchs?
PANITCH: He means the very small number of Greeks who own the Greek economy. This doesn't get talked about much. The enemy gets portrayed as Angela Merkel, etc., but who she is defending, of course, is the ruling class of Greece, who brought Greece into the European Union on the terms it was brought in. We're talking about the great shipowners, the people who used to identify with Aristotle Onassis, although he's been succeeded by a new generation, who weren't paying any taxes until last year. Since the military coup in 1967, the first thing they did was remove all taxes from Greek shipowners. And they weren't paying any taxes until last year. We're talking about the families who own the private media, the television companies, the newspapers, who own the development companies, the construction companies. They dominate merchant trade. And they are the ones who have benefited from privatization, in partnership with foreign companies who bought up parts of Greece. So it's very much a victory for the people.