By Antonis Anzoletou

The culture of cooperative governments in Greece is quite recent.

Post-politically, single-party majorities have dominated, although their effectiveness has been questioned after the economic crisis and the country’s inclusion in the memorandums.

It is a fact, however, that no majority that emerged through collaborations managed to exhaust the four-year period with the exception of the last one, the 2015-2019 period.

Several, of course, had a special purpose.

The transitional government formed after the fall of the dictatorship on July 24, 1974 with Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was called the “government of national unity”. It consisted of some executives of the pre-dictatorial parties of the ERE and the Center Union and some executives of the anti-dictatorial struggle.

It lasted until November 21, 1974.

Successive one-party governments of New Democracy and PASOK followed until the introduction of simple proportionality by the government of Andreas Papandreou changed all the facts.

In June 1989, Konstantinos Mitsotakis with a percentage of 44.28% wins 145 seats in the Parliament and fails to form a parliamentary majority.

The President of the Republic, Christos Sargetakis, following the dictates of the Constitution, began the exploratory orders for the formation of a government.

After intensive consultations, and in order, as at least it was said publicly, to avoid a statute of limitations for the Koskotas scandal and for those involved to be brought to justice, the leaders of New Democracy, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, and the Synaspsis, Charilaos Florakis and Leonidas Kyrkos, decided to support “special purpose government”.

New polls followed in November 1989 with New Democracy reaching 46.19% (148 seats) and PASOK following with 40.68% (128 seats). The three forces (New Democracy, PASOK, SYANASPISMOS) proceeded to form the “Ecumenical Government” with Xenophon Zolotas as Prime Minister who drew up the “Fiscal Management Program”.

Twenty-two years later, in October 2011, George Papandreou had achieved the debt restructuring agreement, but a surprise proposal for a referendum led him after a series of events outside the prime ministership.

Loukas Papademos, who had been vice president of the ECB for eight years, took over the reins of the country with the support of New Democracy (Antonis Samaras), PASOK (Giorgos Papandreou) and LAOS (Giorgos Karatzaferis).

The KKE and SYRIZA did not support the new government, while DIMAR also refused the vote of confidence, leaving room for its assistance if needed.

The next coalition government was formed by New Democracy, PASOK of Evangelos Venizelos and DIMAR of Fotis Kouvelis in June 2012. Antonis Samaras took over as Prime Minister.

The economic crisis had fragmented the political system, as the elections of May 2012 had preceded, as the first two parties had not managed to gather a percentage of more than 36%.

SYRIZA took the position of official opposition, leaving PASOK in third place. The cooperation of the three parties became possible after the definition of their programmatic agreement.

Some of the points of this were that there should be no further cuts in salaries and pensions, as far as this is possible due to the renegotiation of the memorandum, but also the demands of the troika.

To proceed with the recapitalization of the Agricultural Bank as a driver of growth, the reduction of VAT in the focus and the regulation for borrowers so that the installment of debts is the highest up to 30% of the salary, etc.

In January 2015, SYRIZA with a percentage of 36.34% gathered 149 seats and by allying with the ANEL of Panos Kamenos (13 seats) they form a parliamentary majority of 162 seats with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The cooperation was repeated in September of the same year where elections were held again after the signing of the third memorandum and the departure of 25 MPs from SYRIZA.

In the first government, the main purpose of cooperation, as stated during the pre-election period and after taking power, was the overall negotiation of the terms and amounts that had been agreed with the country’s lenders, for the benefit of the economically weaker classes.