(Finance) – Clear victory for the conservative party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the parliamentary elections in Greece which were held yesterday. New Democracy (ND) obtained 40.8% of the votes (results still partial), with a clear advantage over the left of the former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, which stops at 20% of the votes, ahead of the socialist party Pasok-Kinal which collects 11.6%. However, if Mitsotakis fails to achieve his goal of an absolute majority of seats in the new Parliament, he has already hinted that he will take the country back to the polls in late June to consolidate the result.
The Conservative leader called his victory “a political earthquake” and has made it clear that he wants to go to new elections, which could be held at the end of June or the beginning of July, and will allow him, if he confirms this performance, to obtain the absolute majority. “The result proved that ND has the consent of the citizens to govern itself,” Mitsotakis said.
Yesterday’s elections were indeed held with a new one proportional electoral system, which eliminates the assignment of 50 seats to the most voted party, but when the vote will return to the majority premium it will be reintroduced: and the right-wing government will need 37% of the votes to govern with an absolute majority of seats. Greece today enjoys a fairly positive economic situation: unemployment and inflation have decreased, while the recovery of post-Covid tourism it brought growth to 5.9% in 2022. Yesterday’s elections were the first in Greece since its economy ceased to be closely supervised by international lenders.
This is a heavy blow for Tsipras, who lost his fourth consecutive electoral battle after being prime minister from 2015 to 2019, during which he led the negotiations very difficult with the creditors who almost made Greece leave the euro. Tsipras lost a third of the votes he obtained in 2019, and in some areas even came behind the socialist Pasok-Kinal party, led by the 44-year-old Nikos Androulakis.
Another victim of the vote was the former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, whose leftist anti-austerity party MeRA25 he didn’t even make it to Parliament. The right-wing government’s best ally was the divisions of the opposition, which voted fragmented and conflicted. Mitsotakis commented: “We will run faster, for better wages, jobs, a better health system, a stronger Greece” and added: “I am proud and feel the weight of responsibility for such an important result”.