ND tables amendment to controversial draft law to give vote to expatriates

Main opposition New Democracy (ND) party on Wednesday tabled an amendment to a recently submitted draft law by the government, aimed to make the country’s election system more proportional. The ND amendment foresees the breakup of the biggest election district in Greece (Athens' second election district) and giving Greek citizens living overseas the right to vote in their place of residence.

The amendment by the center-right party comes amid heated debate over the government’s intent to pass changes to the election law, primarily an elimination of a 50-seat bonus for the first-past-the-post party in a general election.

At present, a party needs 150+1 deputies in Greece’s 300-MP Parliament to give its proposed government a vote of confidence. Without the 50-MP bonus, a party would have to reach upwards of 40 to 42 percent of the valid general vote to form a stand-alone government without coalition partners.

As such, most opposition parties have sharply criticized the proposal, while the leftist government has replied that a more proportional representational system falls along the lines of its leftist ideology.

Another controversial provision in the draft law gives 17-year-olds the right to vote, a year before the legal age of adulthood. ND and several other center-left and centrist parties in Parliament have expressed their opposition. However, the more extreme ends in the legislature, the Marxist old-guard Communist Party (KKE) and the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi), appear more positive to aspects of the draft law – especially the latter extremist grouping.

Nevertheless, in order for changes to apply in the next election, whenever it is held, the draft law must be ratified by 200 MPs, a prospect that appears difficult at present.