MacroPolis

After a trying few weeks, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has seen in recent days his choice for President of the Republic elected and evidence emerged in the Tempe case that could prove crucial in establishing whether the authorities covered up information about the fatal crash.

The election of Konstantinos Tasoulas as the next president in the fourth round of voting will give Mitsotakis some breathing space and allow the government to regroup.

Tasoulas retained the 160 votes he had secured in the previous rounds from the 274 MPs present, clearing the lower threshold of 151 with relative ease. His support consisted of the government majority of 156 with the addition of four independents.

Some of the smaller left-wing parties abstained in the fourth round of voting in protest at the choice of former speaker Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

For New Democracy, the election of Tasoulas will bring some relief. Although the party veteran was elected with the smallest majority of any president in the post-junta era, thanks to a constitutional amendment introduced in 2019, the conclusion of the process will allow the conservatives to draw a line under what has proved to be a less than straightforward exercise.

Mitsotakis will have known when he chose Tasoulas that the traditional right-winger would unite the party at the expense of snubbing the time-honoured parliamentary consensus; however, the resurgence of interest in Tempe has added to the polarisation, leading some left-wing parties and some of the victims' relatives to call for his resignation over his management of the investigations into the accident.

The disarray among the left-wing parties and the inability of PASOK and SYRIZA to find common ground on the issue will add to the satisfaction in the prime minister's office.

The main opposition party, PASOK, said in a statement that Tasoulas' election marked a break with one of the few consensual traditions in the Greek political system and called the development a step backwards. The social democrats claimed that Mitsotakis' decision to put Tasoulas forward was a symptom of his controlling style of government. SYRIZA leader Sokratis Famellos accused Mitsotakis of undermining democratic institutions by proposing a partisan candidate.

Despite the united condemnation of the government, Wednesday's vote exposed a rift between the parties of the left, in particular between SYRIZA and the leadership of the breakaway party New Left.

New Left had supported SYRIZA's candidate Louka Katseli in the first rounds of voting, but its MPs followed the lead of party leader Alexis Haritsis and walked out of the fourth round, along with the left-wing populists of Course for Freedom, led by former SYRIZA MP Zoe Konstantopoulou.  The surprise move by New Left was condemned by SYRIZA spokesman Giorgos Karameros, who said the decision was incomprehensible in view of the principles that bind the two parties.

SYRIZA has been trying to reconcile with New Left MPs who left the party over disagreements with former leader Stefanos Kasselakis. The grouping, which currently punches above its weight in parliament with 11 MPs, compared its polling figures, which put it at around 1.5 pct, well below the 3 pct threshold it would need to be re-elected. SYRIZA itself has been slipping in the polls since the break with Kasselakis, leading some to say

The SYRIZA leadership had hoped that some form of cooperation between the two parties would lift both out of the doldrums, but the latest development has made that prospect more distant.

The government is also hoping that new video footage concerning the Tempe train crash will help ease some of the pressure that has been building over the last few weeks and which New Democracy officials fear could boost parties that present themselves as being anti-systemic.

The footage, taken from CCTV cameras operated by the private security firm hired by the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE), appears to show the freight train involved in the 2023 Tempe accident entering and leaving a tunnel a few minutes before the accident. There appears to be no container on board the first three flat cars, which were carrying sheet metal. There has been speculation, based on independent investigations, that a container of flammable chemicals was placed on one of the flatbeds and that this liquid caused the fire that broke out after the crash, killing up to 30 of the 57 victims.

The video footage was submitted to the investigating judge by the security company's lawyer, Vassilis Kapernaros. Kapernaros, a former MP for the now-defunct Independent Greeks (ANEL), said the three pieces of CCTV footage were found after the security firm conducted a further search of its records.  Opposition parties and the victims' families raised concerns about why such footage was only discovered two years after the accident and amid controversy over what was on board the freight train.

Government officials are concerned that this climate of mistrust and suspicion will give a boost to populist parties on the far right and far left. Recent opinion polls appear to have given New Democracy, as well as other mainstream parties, serious cause for concern.

A survey by Real Polls for Protagon.gr shows that 83.6 pct of Greeks believe that the government 'definitely' should have done more to shed light on the Tempe crash, while another 11.6 pct believe that it 'probably' should have done more.

The Real Polls survey also underlines the lack of confidence Greeks have in the country's justice system: 55.6 pct said they "definitely" think it does not work well, while 27.4 pct think it "probably" does not work properly.

The survey’s measure of voting intentions found considerable support for Course of Freedom, the far left populist party led by Zoe Konstantopoulou, and the nativist far right Voice of Reason led by Afroditi Latinopoulou.

New Democracy is ahead on 21.1 pct, followed by PASOK on 11.2. Course of Freedom is in third on 7.5 pct, with Voice of Reason narrowly behind on 7.2 pct. The Communist Party (KKE) is fifth on 6.2 pct, followed by Greek Solution on 5.3 pct. SYRIZA places seventh with backing of just 4.3 pct. A significant 18.6 pct of respondents said they are undecided.