Greece prepares for elections on June 25thwith the government of the premier Frosts, just appointed by Parliament (Vuli/ Βουλή) after the elections of May 21, which has the precise task of leading the country towards the vote. In fact, Parliament took office on June 1st and will remain in office until the 25th of the same month, the day on which the vote will take place with the new electoral law which will give a bonus/premium of seats (variable up to a maximum of 50 depending on the percentage of votes obtained) to the party that wins the election. If it were possible to summarize with a singing metaphor, one could say that for Vuli “the party that has just begun is already over”.
We will vote with the strengthened electoral system and, barring last-minute unforeseen events, the New Democracy party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis prepares to rule with one parliamentary majority of about 200 out of 300 MPs.
Chi è Kyriakos Mitsotakis
Born in 1968 into one of the largest Greek political families, he grew up in France where his father Konstantinos, future party leader and prime minister, was in exile due to the military dictatorship (1967-1974). The Mitsotakis family comes from Crete as the surname suggests: “akis” is in fact the suffix that indicates the patronymic for those originating from the island (While the suffix “òpoulos” in the surname indicates the origin from the Peloponnese while “adis” and “idis” testify to the origin from the ” Pontus” the region of Asia Minor from where thousands of Greeks were expelled during the war against the Turks in the early years of the last century).
As is often recalled, the main Greek political parties are heirs of the Byzantine mentality so more than parties they are political families with a strong dynastic connotation where the offspring are made to study and prepared to be ready when it will be their turn to lead the movement. Her sister is Dora Bakoyanni, who kept the surname of her husband Pavlos, killed by an attack by the far-left terrorist group “November 17”. Dora’s son is Kostas, current mayor of Athens. After international training between France and the USA, Mitsotakis’ debut in politics took place in 2000 with his election as deputy.
In the years of crisis we find MItsotakis minister of the government led by Antonis Samarasone of the ND hawks, and he will be the one to carry out one of the most unpopular measures imposed on Greece by the Troika, namely the drastic reduction of civil servants.
In 2015, in the wake of the party’s electoral defeat, he became President of the ND and to recover consensus he hit the keys that were very sensitive to his electorate, i.e. the relations with the Orthodox Church (from which the premier of the time Alexis Tsipras, coming from the radical left, had distanced himself) and the historical identity of Macedonia, openly criticizing the Prespe accords of 2018 which closed the dispute with Skopje by accepting the name “North Macedonia”.
His posts, therefore, were immediately at the top and his political career was unscathed amidst past and recent scandals (Siemens for corruption, then the accusations of wiretapping on deputies of the Greek Parliament) that touched him but never directly affected him; and also the bad management of crises such as that of the railways after the tragic train accident of last March 1st.
Democracy without ‘participation’
According to left-wing analysts, the current ND is a party that has lost the “participatory” connotations of the democratic life of the past, in the sense that after these elections the participation of the opposition will be reduced.
Almost 50 years after the 1974 political elections, the first since the end of the dictatorship of the Colonels, the approval of this electoral law a simple majority, which seems tailor-made for ND, pushed Alexis Tsipras, the main leader of the opposition, to address the last desperate appeal to the voters of that party “don’t you realize that it is no longer what it used to be?”. We recall that ND was born as a conservative center-right party but which is still a member of the European People’s Party and which opposes the military junta (although in the past some of its exponents have been doubted). However, viewed from the right, Tsipras’ appeal is viewed as one early admission of defeatbecause now there is no longer talk of an alliance on the left.
Others like Yannis Varoufakisleft-wing leader of MERA 25, who has not entered Parliament, have already said that after June 25, in addition to the Turkish Erdogan, there will be a ‘Erdoganized’ Greece for too much power in the hands of a single man. As often happens in political life, the criticisms of the opponents are considered merits and so the new electoral law, on the right, is considered a driving force for stability for the good of Greece that the citizens themselves ask .
Meanwhile on the Turkish side, Erdogan, the original one, confirmed its success. And one wonders what this means for the future of Greek-Turkish relations. Erdogan appointed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan the former head of Turkish intelligence, the one who in 2016 discovered the coup attempt just in time to save him and give him time to foil it.
Immediately afterwards he spoke of a new course for relations with Greece, but to understand what it is we have to wait for the NATO summit of 11 July in Lithuania. The fate of the two countries always proceeds on parallel tracks, but their citizens wish a good quality of their railways.
Cover photo EPA/GEORGE VITSARAS