ON THE STREETS:THERE WEREN'T many of them but their presence was menacing all the same.
Wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with their party logo and an ersatz swastika, sunglasses and military caps, a group of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn members stood around at the entrance to a school in a small city south of Athens.
It was the sight of these musclemen that greeted voters as they went to cast their votes in central Corinth, the prefecture of which gave the neo-Nazi outfit its best nationwide result in the May 6th election – an unprecedented 12 per cent.
The party, whose spokesman assaulted two left-wing opponents live on TV in the meantime, had clearly grown in confidence in the six weeks since May 6th.
And the party’s voters also seemed to be more open about backing the party.
“I voted Golden Dawn in May and today. I’m a taxi driver and I’m not making enough money to feed my family,” said Yannis, a taxi driver, denying that he had an issue with illegal immigration, the party’s favourite campaigning topic.
Not everyone appreciated the men in black.
“It’s intimidating and it surely breaks the law on canvassing on election day,” said Fotini, a secondary-school teacher, as she made her way into the school to vote.
As she emerged, the one-time conservative New Democracy voter said her position hadn’t changed since May 6th.
“I voted Syriza for the second time; it’s the only party that is trying to do something different. There is no way I can back one of the two big parties that brought the country to where it is today.”
But the hope that Syriza inspired in many of its voters on May 6th took a battering as a result of the relentless warnings from home and abroad that a vote for the left meant a vote for the drachma.
One of those was Nikoletta, an employee at a small newsagents around the corner from New Democracy’s flash headquarters, who said that while she had voted out of hope on May 6th, fear determined her ballot this time round.
“I backed Tsipras last time round but today I went back to my political home, to New Democracy,” she said, adding that the choice didn’t inspire her.
“Whoever wins – they won’t be able to solve our problems.
“The country borrowed the money – not that the little people got any of it – and that has to be paid back.”
She was taking a break outside the shop, trying to escape the deadening heat fanning the country and forest fires around Athens and other parts.
“At least I stayed to vote. Many have headed to the beaches and I’m not sure they’ve bothered,” she said.
Indeed, Athens’s streets were empty.
If this was a crunch vote for Greece, for Europe and for the euro, there was little sense of that immediacy around the sleepy city yesterday.
“I couldn’t afford the petrol to go back to my village to vote. My mother’s sick and she needs me here. What can I do?” complained Yannis, who said he was a lifelong Communist voter.
