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After a five-week electoral campaign, almost ten million Greek citizens are called to the polls again on Sunday to elect the government. The leader of the conservative party of Nea Dimokratia, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, seeking a second term as prime minister, had obtained a landslide victory in the elections of last May 21 – recalls Elena Kaniadakis for Ansa -: with 40% of the votes, he had doubled the result of his main opponent, the left-wing Syriza party, led by Alexis Tsipras, stuck at 20%. But the result, described by Mitsotakis as a “political earthquake”, did not guarantee the conservatives an absolute majority in the 300-seat parliament.
La scommessa di Mitsotakis
The conservative leader, aware that the next elections would be held with a different electoral system approved by his own government, with a bonus of up to 50 seats for the leading party, thus chose not to undertake talks to form an alliance, opening the road to new elections with which to obtain autonomy. A goal within reach, if the May results are confirmed.
Polls predict a clear victory for the right, given between 40 and 45%, while Syriza would settle between 17 and 20%; the third political force, the socialist party of Pasok, is given around 11-12%. The consensus enjoyed by Mitsotakis does not appear to have been affected by the tragedy of Pylos, which took place on June 14, when a fishing boat carrying up to 800 migrants was shipwrecked south of the Peloponnese.
The organization of Greece
“The majority of citizens appreciate the government’s choice to follow a fair but strict immigration policy,” Mitsotakis said during an interview with the broadcaster Ant and then accused Tsipras of targeting the Greek Coast Guard, repeating the same arguments of “Turkish propaganda”.
Equally harsh was the response of the leader of the left, who in his rally yesterday in Syntagma Square, in the center of Athens, reiterated: «We do not take into account the political cost when it comes to defending our values. After the most tragic shipwreck in the history of our country, we were told: “don’t talk, don’t ask, don’t say a word”. Why? Because they weren’t rich, but they were persecuted, because they weren’t Greeks, they weren’t even tourists, they were refugees”.