Conservative Kiriakos Mitsotakis will continue at the helm of Greece for the next four years. His party, New Democracy, has forcefully prevailed in the Greek elections this Sunday, reaching 40.5% of the votes, a result that in this electoral repetition will allow him to govern alone thanks to the bonus of up to 50 seats that re-grants the electoral system in the Hellenic country. With his message focused on economic growth, Mitsotakis has won 158 of the 300 seats in the Greek Parliament, an absolute majority.
The result of the elections, the second in just over a month, is a new setback for former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has been defeated even more resoundingly than in the May 21 elections. His party, the leftist Syriza, has slowed down to just 17.8% of the votes, less than the 20% it obtained in May, when it was already considered a debacle with respect to the polls that predicted that it could dispute victory. on the right. In recent times, Tsipras had tried to soften his message and to present himself as a formation fully integrated into the Greek system, but the polls have shown the limits of that Syriza born out of indignation over the debt crisis that had become a beacon for other forces of the European left. It is predictable that his position will be questioned.
As happened in the previous elections, many of the voters on the left have abandoned Syriza to return to Pasok, which has obtained 11.9% of the vote. The Social Democrats have been third, ahead of the communists KKE (7.6%) and the ultra-right party Espartanos (4.6%), supported by the former neo-Nazi deputy Ilías Kasidiaris, imprisoned for leading a criminal gang. Two other far-right parties have achieved parliamentary representation, Greek Solution (4.4%) and Niki (Victoria), with 3.7%. Finally, the formation of the former Syriza deputy Zoe Konstantopulu, Travesía de la Libertad, has managed to pass the 3% threshold to enter Parliament, something that the MeRA25 of former minister Yanis Varufakis has not achieved. Participation has been low, 52%, almost 10 points less than in May.
Mitsotakis won for the first time in 2019 as the new face of one of the most powerful families in the country, being the son of former Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis (1990-1993) and brother of Dora Bakoyannis, who was mayor of Athens and minister of Foreign. The liberal leader puffed up the results and assured that he has received a “strong mandate” to carry out reforms that allow raising salaries and modernizing the national health system.
The Greeks have rewarded the good economic results of Mitsotakis, who has once again focused the electoral campaign on the growth that the country has experienced during his tenure. With him, foreign investment has increased and debt has dropped 35 percentage points in the last two years. The terrible shipwreck off the coast of the Peloponnese of a fishing boat in which up to 750 people were traveling, and the doubts about the actions of the Greek coast guard in the tragedy, have barely had an impact on the electoral campaign. New Democracy has not suffered the wear and tear of the enormous spying scandal on politicians, journalists and businessmen by the EYP secret services, which even affected the Pasok leader.
