Athens, May 22 (AFP\/APP): Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he was seeking a new vote as soon as on June 25 in order to obtain a ruling majority, a day after his party won national elections that failed to produce a single-party government.<\/p>\n
The conservative New Democracy party of Mitsotakis trounced its rivals in Sunday’s vote, with a 20-point lead over its nearest contender — Syriza, led by leftist Alexis Tsipras.<\/p>\n
Voters handed the conservatives their best result since 2007, crediting the party with bringing economic stability back to a nation once known as an EU laggard.<\/p>\n
“Shock and awe”, headlined left-wing daily Efsyn on Monday, summing up the feeling shared by both New Democracy and Syriza voters, while pro-government Proto Thema noted that the double-digit margin was the widest seen since 1974.<\/p>\n
The “political earthquake” hailed by Mitsotakis sent the Athens stock market to its highest in almost a decade.<\/p>\n
But the win fell five seats short of an outright majority, leaving Mitsotakis with the option of either seeking a coalition or calling a new vote.<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old Harvard graduate on Monday declined power sharing, telling President Katerina Sakallaropoulou, who handed him the mandate to form a government, that it was not possible to form a coalition under the current parliamentary line-up.<\/p>\n
Greece should head for new elections “as soon as possible,” he said.
\nFollowing Mitsotakis’ rejection, Greece will continue going through the motions required under the constitution — with the president then handing similar mandates to Syriza and then third-placed socialist party Pasok-Kinal.<\/p>\n
The bids are also doomed to failure, given Sunday’s result.
\nHours after the vote, Tsipras, too, had set the stage for a new vote, saying the next battle will be “critical and final”.<\/p>\n
A senior judge will eventually be named interim prime minister and call for new elections.<\/p>\n
– Economic stability –<\/p>\n
In power over the last four years, former McKinsey consultant Mitsotakis steered the country through the pandemic which devastated Greece’s vital tourism industry.<\/p>\n
On his watch, the erstwhile EU economic headache has enjoyed a post-Covid revival, booking growth of 5.9 percent in 2022.
\nWith unemployment and inflation falling, and growth this year projected at twice that of the European Union average, Greece’s outlook was a far cry from the throes of the crippling debt crisis a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Mitsotakis’ term however was blighted by a wiretapping scandal as well as a train crash that claimed 57 lives in February.
\nThe government initially blamed the accident — Greece’s worst-ever rail disaster — on human error, even though the country’s notoriously poor rail network has suffered from years of under-investment.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, neither the accident nor the wiretapping scandal appeared to have dented support for his conservatives — who scored a far bigger win than that predicted by opinion polls ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n
Despite the massive protests that broke out in the aftermath of the rail crash, the transport minister at the time, Kostas Karamanlis, was reelected on Sunday.<\/p>\n
– Turn the tide –<\/p>\n
Under a new electoral law that comes into play in the next ballot, the winner can obtain a bonus of up to 50 seats. Based on Sunday’s showing and that calculation, New Democracy is virtually assured of a victory.
\nThe left will likely seek to turn the tide by campaigning on cost-of-living problems which occupy many voters’ minds.<\/p>\n
But the centre-left vote remains splintered between Syriza and the socialist party Pasok-Kinal led by 44-year-old Nikos Androulakis — a stumbling block for either party in the face of a consolidated right.<\/p>\n
Tsipras is unlikely to face an immediate challenge for his Syriza leadership role. But he faces a tight deadline to recalibrate his approach ahead of the next polls.<\/p>\n
His former maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis fared worse. His anti-austerity MeRA25 party failed to cross the three-percent threshold to make it to parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Athens, May 22 (AFP\/APP): Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he was seeking a new vote as soon as on June 25 in order to obtain a ruling majority, a day after his party won national elections that failed to produce a single-party government. […]<\/p>\n
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