January 25th, 20 15. Once more, Greeks living abroad will not be able to vote in the parliamentary elections from their place of residence.
One of them is Petros Papakalos, lawyer linguist in the Court of Justice of the European Union (Luxembourg). On 29/12/2014, the day the Greek general elections were announced, he wrote on his Facebook profile:
"Today's vote in the Parliament marked the proclamation of early elections. Putting aside the optimism of several friends or the worries of others, I would like to focus on a problem that concerns all Greeks who habitually reside in European countries. Given that the cost of moving a family to Greece is very high, it is clear that exercising our right to vote becomes extremely difficult.
Successive Greek governments never seriously bothered to ensure the exercise of this right. They usually approached the issue with the prospect of enlarging their electoral clientele, by considering to grant voting rights to second, third and fourth generation Greek immigrants in the US and elsewhere. Instead, they could have done the realistic minimum of giving the ability to exerci se that right to those who have Greek nationality and are already registered in the electoral rolls.
I know the objections. "Why do you want to have a say when you no longer live in Greece?". And this comes from people who welcome the right to vote in the grandfather's or great-grandfather's electoral district by people who live in Attica for decades. Perhaps they think that migration implies disenfranchisement. Ignoring that we continue to be taxed in this country, and also to have assets, care for the future, and for the future of our family and friends.
Greece is probably the only EU country that does not provide its expatriate citizens with the opportunity to vote in embassies and consulates (or even the possibility of postal voting). Once more, I will have to put up with the benevolent taunts from my Slovenian, Czech and Cypriot friends, who will ask me innocently "but, can't you vote in your embassy?". No, I do not have that option.
We formally belong in Europe for over three decades. And our governments have done almost nothing to make this affiliation a substantial o ne."
I know the objections. "Why do you want to have a say when you no longer live in Greece?". And this comes from people who welcome the right to vote in the grandfather's or great-grandfather's electoral district by people who live in Attica for decades. Perhaps they think that migration implies disenfranchisement. Ignoring that we continue to be taxed in this country, and also to have assets, care for the future, and for the future of our family and friends.
Greece is probably the only EU country that does not provide its expatriate citizens with the opportunity to vote in embassies and consulates (or even the possibility of postal voting). Once more, I will have to put up with the benevolent taunts from my Slovenian, Czech and Cypriot friends, who will ask me innocently "but, can't you vote in your embassy?". No, I do not have that option.
We formally belong in Europe for over three decades. And our governments have done almost nothing to make this affiliation a substantial o ne."
In addition to the above, many of the Greek voters who are excluded from the electoral process live temporarily abroad (e.g. students), while all those who are registered in electoral rolls count as abstention, unless they travel to Greece and vote. And for how many voters are we talking about? At least 500 thousand, who correspond to around 7-8% of the valid ballot in the most recent elections. And that's w ithout counting second and third generation expatriate Greeks. Combined with the bonus of 50 parliamentary seats to the winning party, the exclusion of 100 thousand first-time voters, and an unknown number of voters who live away from their constituency and can't apply on time to transfer their electoral rights, the result is a significant alteration of popular will; to the extent that the phrase "democratically elected government" ceases to have a meaning.
Together with some friends in the Netherlands we had set up I Cannot Vote in the previous elections. It was a campaign aiming at protesting and raising awareness in order to apply political pressure, so that a law allowing expatriate Greeks to vote from abroad would pass. The promotional video we made back then became viral, and unfortunately it is still relevant.
Before launching I Cannot Vote we had the idea of Flight for our Right, a symbolic gesture that involved booking a charter plane and transporting a small number of expatriate voters to Greece; regardless of who they intended to vote for. Sadly, the ini tiative never got off the ground due to the steep cost in every offer we received from airline companies. We did get to appear on Dutch TV however, even though the reporter who contacted us didn't believe our story until she got a confirmation from the Greek embassy.
Today, there is anothe r initiative with the title A Flight for Democracy, and it's crowdfunding in order to send to Greece as many SYRIZA voters as possible. 78% of the goal has been raised already, and there are 9 days left until the sum of €10,000 is reached or surpassed. In a way, this campaign echoes the time when the two former big parties (PASOK and New Democracy) were giving away free plane tickets to their supporters abroad; who would then travel to Greece in order to participate in an electoral procedure full of asterisks, exemptions and discrimination.
How much longer will this situation continue? Soon after the elections were announced, left wing Euro MP Manolis Glezos demanded an immediate solution for the 25th of January, and was accused of populism, since it's practically impossible to organize a reliable voting system from abroad in such short notice. The issue remains however, and i t doesn't concern only the hundreds of thousands expatriate Greeks, but also the quality of Greek democracy in total.
One way to apply pressure towards finding a solution is addressing questions to Greek MP's and Euro MP's through the Vouliwatch online platform, where recently a user proposed postal voting; without receiving a reply yet. Another way is to participate in local events on the subject of Greeks voting from abroad, like the meeting organized on January 12th, at the Greek Cultural Center in Berlin.
What do you intend to do in order to claim the right of expatriate Greeks to vote from abroad? Please let us know by commenting or mailing us, and we will publish your call to action.
Nikolaos Stampoulopoulos
Founder and Creative Director of New Diaspora
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