Taking a closer look at the Greek election

Ancient Greece is generally considered to be the place democracy was invented.

Forget a two-party system. Greece had two dozen political parties running in Sunday's election.

Christ, they've got more fringe political parties than Israel.

No wonder the results don't make sense.

For example, how is an outsider to appreciate the difference between Ecologists Greece and the Greek Ecologists?

One of them is a mainstream "green" part not averse to sitting in coalition with traditional conservative parties.

The other is a loose approximation of the Marijuana Party.

Then there are those parties who you can pretty much figure out by the name.

Not hard to guess where the Fighting Socialists would stand on the euro question.

Or the Anti-capitalist Left Coalition for the Overthrow. Just a hunch, but I'm betting they're anti-austerity.

So what to make of the results?

The results of Sunday's election were trumpeted as a great success for the austerity enema crowd.

No less an authority than Obama opined that this was a step in the right direction.

Even the global stock markets signalled their approval on Monday morning. At least for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Sixty percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Pro-austerity PASOK got the most votes. They won the election.

But 52% of those who voted, voted for a range of anti-austerity parties.

In reality, this chimeric "victory for austerity" was achieved by less than a quarter of Greek voters.

But this doesn't seem to be a point that the New York Times or the Washington Post want to dwell on.

Maybe it's time to take that ancient Greek invention into the shop for a tune-up.