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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Gloves come off as Greek elections loom

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As Greece enters an election year, the two main political parties are deeply polarised setting the stage for a no-holds-barred campaign.
With the ballot scheduled for October but expected as early as March, hostility between the ruling leftist Syriza party and the frontrunning New Democracy conservatives has hit fever pitch.
“We know they plan to hold dirty elections,” New Democracy head Kyriakos Mitsotakis said of his Syriza rivals in a recent speech, dismissing government accusations of kickbacks allegedly pocketed by his party while in power prior to 2015 as “savage propaganda”.
Both sides accuse each other of marshalling web trolls to spread misinformation. New Democracy says the leftists have dished out well-paid state jobs to ill-qualified friends and allies.
In turn, the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras points to ongoing investigations targeting years of alleged kickbacks to conservative ex-ministers from Swiss pharma multinational Novartis and German engineering giant Siemens.
The government has identified prominent media group Skai as a key source of what it sees as unfair criticism of its policies. Tsipras’ party is boycotting its talk shows.
Relations hit rock-bottom last month when a bomb exploded outside Skai’s Athens headquarters, prompting media group owner Yiannis Alafouzos to say Tsipras’ government was “morally” responsible for the attack.
“There is a climate that not only tolerates but often encourages extreme forms of expression in the public space,” Nikos Konstandaras, a veteran columnist for liberal daily Kathimerini that is part of the Skai group, said.
Brought to power on an anti-austerity ticket in 2015 after decades on the sidelines, Tsipras’ government faced an overwhelmingly hostile media. His response was to completely overhaul the TV sector and force channel owners — who had played kingmaker between New Democracy and the Pasok socialists for over two decades — to pay millions of euros for new operating licences.
With media under the control of businessmen, mainly active in construction and shipping, ownership has long been a means of securing state contracts and favourable bank loans, adds Nikos Smyrnaios, a digital media professor at Toulouse university.
After two years of bitter rivalry between Tsipras and those he labelled “oligarchs”, three major media groups changed hands to avoid bankruptcy. But the overhaul did little to promote smaller, more independent voices, notes Smyrnaios.
“Media groups are still in the hands of influential businessmen,” he said. — AFP




Hélène Colliopoulou



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