(ANSA) - ATHENS, 21 MAG - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos
Mitsotakis' conservative party scored a thumping win at Sunday's
election, first results show, but would likely call a new ballot
in a month's time as it fell short of an outright majority to
rule alone.
With just over 50 percent of the ballot counted, his New
Democracy party was credited with 40.9 percent of the votes, a
20-point lead ahead of his nearest rival, leftist challenger
Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party, which garnered 20.1 percent.
Mitsotakis would either enter into tough negotiations from
Monday with his rivals to seek a coalition, or he could opt to
head to a new election, likely in early July. Early reactions
from his party's bigwigs suggest that a new vote is well on the
cards. "It's a huge surprise...an amazing result," former
foreign minister Nikos Dendias told state TV ERT. Takis
Theodorikakos, a minister and a senior official from Mitsotakis'
party, told private TV station Skai that the result suggested
that the conservatives could garner enough in a second election
"to continue the reforms as an autonomous government". Another
New Democracy minister Theodoros Skylakakis said the "other
parties' reactions show that we will be led to a second
election". Senior Syriza official Dimitris Papadimoulis, a
European Parliament vice-president, told state TV ERT that if
confirmed, the result would be "significantly far" from the
party's goals and would mark a failure to rally opposition to
the government. Turnout reached only 56 percent as many had
likely sat out the ballot given the anticipated second vote.
- Economic stability - Mitsotakis, a Harvard graduate and
former McKinsey consultant, had entered into the elections as
the favourite, with Greece currently enjoying fairly robust
economic health. Unemployment and inflation have fallen and
growth this year is projected to reach twice that of the
European Union's average -- a far cry from the throes of a
crippling debt crisis a decade ago. With a post-Covid tourism
revival lifting the country's growth to 5.9 percent in 2022,
Mitsotakis has campaigned on a pledge to build on the economic
gains. Yet the fear that wages are not keeping pace with rising
costs remains a key concern for voters -- something his rival
Tsipras sought to exploit. But the result is a crushing blow to
Tsipras, who has lost his fourth straight electoral battle to
Mitsotakis after serving as premier in 2015 to 2019, during
which he led rocky negotiations with creditors that nearly
crashed Greece out of the euro. In some areas, Tsipras trails
the third-ranked socialist party Pasok-Kinal, led by 44-year-old
Nikos Androulakis. Early results have Pasok at 12.6 percent
nationwide. Androulakis had been seen early on as a potential
coalition partner for Mitsotakis, but things went sour when he
discovered he had been under state surveillance. The wiretap
scandal, which erupted last year, forced the resignation of the
head of the intelligence service and a nephew of Mitsotakis, who
was a top aide in his office. While it sparked an uproar, the
wiretap saga did not seem to have had much of an impact on the
conservatives' results, which were far better than the 6-8
percent lead predicted by pollsters in the run-up to the
election. Anger over a train crash that claimed 57 lives in
February also did not seem to have significantly impacted the
vote. The 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. - 'We have a future' - Welcoming the
results, retiree Glykeria Tzima, 62, said: "Democracy won today
-- not only New Democracy, but democracy as a whole. "We want to
see a continuation of what was created in the last four years
and leave the toxicity behind us. We, us Greeks, went through
tough times and we saw that with this government and this prime
minister, we have a future." But Georgios Koulouris, 60, a miner
living in Australia who returned to vote, said deep challenges
and inequality plague the country. "There is a part of the
people who literally lives on small change," he said, adding
that Greece was suffering from a brain drain because of
stagnating salaries and exploding rents. bur-hmn/jph/jj
/ (ANSA).
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Greece PM's party wins election, but no outright victory
With over 50% of ballot counted, New Democracy credited 40.9%