Election Forecasts
A series of elections in various countries over the next few months will test the endurance of the European experiment. France will hold its first round of elections on April 22. Greece will follow on May 6, and then Italy will hold municipal elections, followed by Ireland, which will hold a referendum on its memorandum with the euro zone. Although it is always dangerous to make predictions since things change very quickly in politics, I will nevertheless risk the following prediction: Regardless of their country of origin, voters will punish the politicians who imposed austerity. The retribution will begin in France, where all the polls show President Sarkozy handily losing to his socialist rival in the second round of elections. One in four Frenchmen is currently out of work in France, and the country is struggling not to turn into… Greece. The socialist candidate Mr. Hollande is promising to follow a policy of economic growth . He is offering a message of hope and telling fearful voters what they want to hear. I believe that the same thing will happen in Germany when elections are held this coming Fall. And it might well be that come November despite the fact that President Obama bears little responsibility for the state of the economy and that in fact he has improved it he might also be punished. And that’s because in people’s minds, he might be identified with an economy in crises. Policies of austerity, depression, and hopelessness have led to “economic suicides” and an exodus of young people from Greece, who have begun to arrive in New York by the hundreds. The austerity has caused paralysis, insecurity, and concern. What are my predictions for Greece? The people will punish those who have handled this crisis and imposed this unprecedented poverty. That means that Venizelos is going to suffer a major election loss, no matter how he tries to free himself from the bonds of the Papandreou administration, like a modern-day Prometheus. And the more he tries, the more ridiculous he will seem.
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