Loading player
In Sunday’s Greek elections, the second in just over a month, former prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right New Democracy party is expected to secure a numerically sizeable victory. According to polls, he could obtain an absolute majority and form a government without the need to enter into coalitions with other parties.
The brief electoral campaign between May’s elections and those on Sunday was dominated by the news of the sinking of the migrant boat off the coast of Pylos, in which hundreds of people are estimated to have died and which is one of the worst disasters in the recent years in the Mediterranean. In Greece, the debate focused on the alleged responsibilities of the Coast Guard and on the extreme harshness of the migration policies desired by the Mitsotakis government. However, these controversies would not have turned into electoral weakness: on the contrary, according to polls New Democracy would have further widened the margin of advantage it had over Syriza, the left-wing party led by Alexis Tsipras.
The May elections had already been a clear victory for Mitsotakis. New Democracy had taken 40.7 percent of the vote against Syriza’s 20 percent. The third party with the most votes was PASOK, the historic center-left party in Greece, with 11.4 percent of the votes, then the communists of the KKE with 5.3 and the extreme right of EL with 3.7. Despite the good result, New Democracy had obtained 146 seats out of the 300 that make up the unicameral parliament of Greece, and therefore had failed to achieve an absolute majority.
Mitsotakis, convinced that he could improve his result with a new vote, had refused to form a coalition government. And since all the other parties hadn’t been able to form an executive within a few days, new elections had been called. Mitsotakis then handed over the post of acting prime minister to Ioannis Sarmas, who has been in charge of running day-to-day affairs of Greece until Sunday’s election.
According to the latest polls (which however have made numerous mistakes in recent years and should be taken with a little caution) in this month of the electoral campaign New Democracy has improved further its votes and would now be closer to 42 percent of the vote, while Syriza would have fallen to 17-18 percent. If that were the case, Mitsotakis would win a very solid majority of more than 160 out of 300 seats.
Furthermore, on Sunday there will be votes in Greece with a new electoral law, which was approved by the Mitsotakis government in 2020 but which will enter into force only starting from these elections. If up until the May elections voting had been done using a pure proportional system, the new system which becomes operational on Sunday provides for a flexible majority premium: the winning party in the election gets 20 more seats if it reaches 25 per cent of the votes and to 50 more seats if it reaches 40 per cent.
Mitsotakis’ popularity is mainly due to the great economic successes of his years in government. Starting from some good results of the previous government led by Alexis Tsipras, who had been prime minister between 2015 and 2019, Mitsotakis has adopted economic policies designed to favor businesses (on which he has significantly lowered taxes) and stimulate investment. Greece has had a period of fairly strong economic growth, the unemployment rate has more than halved since its peak in 2015 (it was 27.5 per cent, today it is just over 11) and for the first time since over a decade of cuts, the government has increased pensions and the minimum wage, albeit slightly.
Greece has repaid early International Monetary Fund loans that were taken out during the sovereign debt crisis and many believe that for the first time in 13 years its government bonds could get a positive rating from rating agencies.
However, Mitsotakis’ economic management was not without controversy: in particular, the country’s growth is considered rather uneven, and the deficit it’s still high: it means that the Greek state spends more than it earns, and this could be a long-term problem.
Mitsotakis’ government has also been hit by major controversies: he has been accused of wanting to reduce the autonomy of the judiciary and has been involved in a major scandal in which he has been accused of having put some members of the opposition under surveillance by the secret services . There have also been operations to intimidate journalists which have affected press freedom in the country, and the European Commission has recently opened an infringement case against Greece for a law on television properties, aimed expressly at blocking the main independent television group Nova.
In the last month of the electoral campaign there was then the shipwreck of Pilo, in which the Greek coastguard was challenged, which may have been reticent in providing assistance to migrants and which, according to some versions, would have attached a rope to the boat to tow it, but ending up unintentionally overturning it.
After the shipwreck, Syriza attacked Mitsotakis for his extremely tough policies in terms of migration. Tsipras asked why the Coast Guard only intervened when it was too late, and what responsibility they had for capsizing the boat.
Mitsotakis responded by defending the Coast Guard against all charges and arguing that smugglers, whom he called “wretched” and “human scum”, were to blame. «The so-called “solidarity” [cioè le persone che simpatizzano per i migranti, ndr] they are very unfair when they suggest that the Coast Guard is not doing its job. These people are at sea in the middle of the waves, saving lives and defending our borders,” Mitsotakis said in recent days.
According to polls, the crisis has not affected Mitsotakis, on the contrary: this strategy of showing intransigence on the migration issue, even in the face of one of the greatest tragedies in the Mediterranean in recent years, would have paid off in terms of consensus.
In addition to the five parties that managed to enter parliament in May’s elections, there is the possibility that another one will be added: in recent days the Spartans party, a rather violent far-right formation, has grown significantly in the polls and it could exceed the 3 percent threshold needed to win parliamentary seats. This growth came after the endorsement of Ilias Kasidiaris, the former spokesman of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. Kasidiaris is currently in prison, convicted of various crimes including running Golden Dawn as a criminal organization and carrying out beatings, extortion and other crimes.