People are voting for parties they never would have considered before, expressing the fear, anger and general sense of uncertainty that has taken root in every heart. Many who were left of centre will vote for the conservative New Democracy party because it says it will not prompt a crisis with our creditors and so the reforms and loans will continue. Others who never considered themselves leftists are flocking to the other pole, the radical left coalition Syriza, which declares that the loan and reform package (known here as the "memorandum") is already null and void.
More unsettling is the new prominence of a group of violent rightwing extremists, who are drawing support from many who might never have thought of voting for them but, feeling powerless, want proxy hard men strutting about the country.
With our vote, we will show that our parties' time is up, because none of them seems fit to deal with the challenges that they will face in government. And this, as much as our threat to the euro, is something that should concern the rest of Europe. Many of Greece's challenges are unique, but our country distils problems inherent in Europe's unification and one of them is the inability of political forces to deal with rising popular anger at home while at the same time co-ordinating action at the European level.
The Greeks are split and disorientated, with the two centrist parties (New Democracy and centre-left Pasok) that have dominated politics since 1974 losing most of their support and credibility. There is no centre now, no powerful party synonymous with the state, no one to offer the reassurance of the old political patrons.
Just as the economic crisis was first seen as a purely Greek problem, only to lead to much more fundamental questioning of the EU's determination to protect its common currency, so too the political crisis could signal what is in store in other countries. When the traditional formula of austerity and reforms brings no swift results other than to push great numbers of people into unemployment, poverty and despair, while undermining the confidence of citizens and businesses, people will turn their backs on reality and seek comfort either in the past, in shared grievances or in populists' false promises.
