Greece Elections: Greece’s New Democracy Party has won the recently held parliamentary elections. However, the leading party is still short of the majority to form a government.
According to Reuters, New Democracy has won 40.18% of the votes cast trouncing the radical leftist Syriza, which polled a little more than 20%. Syriza had formed the government between 2015 and 2019. The same report says that New Democracy has won 145 seats, six short of the winning number which will allow it to form the government.Starting Tuesday this week, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will invite each of the three top parties – New Democracy, Syriza and PASOK – to form a government. If they fail, the President will call for fresh elections a month later. Meanwhile, a caretaker government will be set up.
‘We have the majority’
The outgoing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says he has the clear majority. He told his cheering supporters outside the party headquarters in downtown Athens, ‘The ballot results are decisive. They show that New Democracy has the approval of the people to rule, strong and autonomous.’
Many observers see these results as an outstanding and unexpected victory for Mitsotakis. His government was rocked by a phone-tapping controversy, the Covid pandemic, a high cost of living and a fatal train crash in February. Not many political observers were confident of Mitsotakis winning the 2023 elections, and so spectacularly.
Failing to ride the anti-incumbency feeling
On the other hand, it was a disappointing show for Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza party. In 2015, Tsipras won power on the back of the economic crisis that engulfed Greece and shattered that nation’s economy. Another political formation, MeRA25, failed to get any seat in the Greek Parliament. Its founder Yanis Varoufakis was a former finance minister in the 2015 Syriza government. He was later sacked by Tsipras for failed negotiations with Greece’s lenders.
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