Government wins confidence vote, uproar over level of political discourse

By George Gilson

The government handily won a confidence vote this evening (153-136) after a three-day debate which was characterised by ad hominem and vitriolic exchanges between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and main opposition New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Former long-time parliament speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis (arguably the Nestor of the Pasok party) denounced the low level of the discussion in a Facebook post, and many political analysts and pundits opined that the degeneration of parliamentary mores is a huge blow to public trust in parliamentarism and breeds support for the Greek extreme right, currently represented in Parliament by Golden Dawn.

MRB poll

Meanwhile, two new opinion polls were released, one on 9 May (ALCO) and the other on 10 May (MRB), the day of the vote of confidence.

The MRB poll conducted (6-8 May) for Greek Star television gave New Democracy a 7.4 percentage point lead over SYRIZA in the European Parliament election.

Both Tsipras and Mitsotakis called on the electorate to treat it as a referendum on their parties' political programmes.

New Democracy received 30.2 percent compared to Syriza's 22.8 percent.

The Movement for Change (Pasok) placed third with 6.5 percent, 6.2 percent for extreme-right Golden Dawn, 6.1 percent for the Greek Communist Party (KKE), 2.1 percent for the Centrists' Union, and 2.1 percent for To Potami.
The last two are currently parliamentary parties but their numbers indicate they will not be able to muster sufficient support to pass the threshold of three percent of the popular vote to enter parliament in the general election, which must be held by October.

The Greek Ecology-Greens party garnered 1.7 percent, 1.6...