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If the polls are trusted, Kyriakos Mitsotakis will not only win a second consecutive term as Greece’s Prime Minister on Sunday but will win an absolute majority.
Leader of New Democracy party Kyriakos Mitsotakis greets people at a rally in Thessaloniki, Greece, 21 June 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/ACHILLEAS CHIRAS
Greeks go to the polls for a second time this Sunday, to vote for the next government amid predictions that centre-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will likely win a majority.
Almost a month ago, Mitsotakis emerged as the big winner of May 21 elections, taking 40.83 per cent of the vote and leaving his main rival, Alexis Tsipras, and the left-wing party SYRIZA far behind on 20.07 per cent.
Mitsotakis has been Prime Minister since 2019. The financial markets favour him, as he is seen as a stable and secure choice. Inside Greece, his rule was shadowed, among others, by the fatal train accident in Tempi that cost the life of 57 people and the wiretapping scandal, in which journalists, politicians and others were illegally monitored. However, voters still prefer him.
The May 21 elections were held under a simple proportional system, whereby the first party had to win 151 seats out of 300 to form a government. Neither political leader accepted the President’s mandate to form a coalition government. Mitsotakis made it clear that he wanted a majority.
“Next Sunday, the country will have a stable government, with the self-reliant New Democracy at the helm,” said Mitsotakis said in a speech at Nea Moudania, Chalkidiki, northern Greece, on Tuesday.
SYRIZA failed in the first round to convince the centre-left party PASOK, the Greek Communist Party, KKE, and Yanis Varoufakis’s MERA25 to form a progressive alliance.
The fact that it focused its campaign on targeting Mitsotakis left ambiguities regarding its political positions on specific issues that had consequences on the voters’ decision.
“We saw a strongly negative campaign, particularly targeting Mitsotakis. And we saw a lot of ambiguity in terms of policy. Many people do not know SYRIZA’s position on specific fields, or think it is different from what the party claims, and this is not only a voters’ problem,” Antonis Galanopoulos of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, told BIRN.
The second round of elections will be held under the “enhanced” proportional representation system voted in by the New Democracy government of 2019-2023, which gives bonus parliamentary seats to the first party.
The polls show ND leading over SYRIZA by 18.8 per cent. According to voting intention, ND is on 36.6 per cent, SYRIZA 17.8 per cent, PASOK 10.3 per cent, the KKE 6.2 per cent, Pleusi Eleutherias 3.9 per cent, and the far-right parties of Elliniki Lysi 3.6 per cent and Niki 3 per cent.
Varoufakis, once Tsipras’s Finance Minister and now leader of the left-wing party MERA25, looks set to be out of the parliament.
A BIRN analysis, “Election Loser – as well as Winner – Will Shape Greece’s Future,” has stressed the risk of Greece being left without a real opposition.
“Self-reliance means that we will have a one-party government. The greater the majority, i.e., the more seats the first party has, the lower the opposition’s representation in parliament, thus weakening the opposition’s control over the government,” Thomas Psimmas, a PhD student in Philosophy of Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, told BIRN.
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