Greece heads into early elections this Sunday with a center-right government wobbling after a series of wildfires last month. The blazes that devastated Greece's arid countryside in the last two weeks of August -- and killed at least 65 people -- also damaged popular confidence in Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, who only days before the disaster was feeling confident enough to call a snap election.

Now the Sept. 16 election may be one of the tightest in decades. Both Karmanlis' center-right New Democracy party and its socialist rival, PASOK, were polling under 40 percent before a mandatory pre-election blackout on opinion polls two weeks ago -- which means one party or the other may have to share power.

Even more alarming for a country that emerged from a right-wing military junta only in 1974, a xenophobic far-right party called the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) looks ready to hop a 3-percent hurdle and win seats in the national parliament. The LAOS calls for "respect for our history, heroes, religion and traditions," but has won support by assailing "corruption" in Athens -- especially after the government seemed helpless against the fires. The party also mixes anti-immigrant, anti-American, and anti-globalization noises in with its populist rhetoric.

Karamanlis in the meantime has responded to the fires by handing out money to the victims, raising pensions and lowering taxes -- but not before tens of thousands took to the streets in Athens  at the end of August in protest at his government's handling of the disaster. Greek reports said the fires destroyed 4.5 million olive trees, killed 60,000 sheep and goats and burned 510 houses.

Many Greeks suspect that some of the fires had been set on purpose, including one on the day Karamanlis called the elections which some believe was started with the deliberate intention of making the prime minister look bad. Investigators are still working on the causes, but if fires were set by arsonists there might be a more obvious motive, namely property development . Forest land is protected in the Greek constitution, and since there are no maps that show the "official" boundaries of the forests, arson can be a way to bring land out of government protection.