A huge storm, violent, dark and loud, rumbled through Greece, thunder and lightning skittering through the skies. After Sunday’s general elections it was not lost on many: Athenians saw in the tempest a perfect metaphor, an omen even, that the old was finally being washed away.
‘People voted for change, for what they believed would be a fresh start,’ Lefteris Pavlis, who owns a chain of eateries in the city centre, said on Monday. ‘They voted to give Alexis Tsipras a second chance, which says a lot about the state of the opposition.’
And yet the triumphant return to power of the young leftist and his Syriza party, pledging to overturn the old order of corruption, cronyism and vested interests, was not preoccupying many. What was uppermost was the daily grind of living.
‘There are problems,’ sighed Vangelis Evangelides, who sells nuts in the narrow streets beneath the ancient Acropolis. ‘Lots of problems. Will Syriza be able to solve them?’ he shrugged. ‘Let’s hope they can.’
This post was published at The Guardian
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