Last Update: May 22, 2023, 01:41 AM IST
Supporters of the New Democracy conservative party react at the party’s main election kiosk after the first exit polls were announced in Athens, Greece, on May 21. (Image: Reuters)
Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party received 40.8 percent of the vote, with just over 82 percent of the votes counted.
Greece’s ruling New Democracy party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday, but fell just short of the threshold needed to form a government on its own.
With most votes counted, the conservative New Democracy took a commanding lead of 40.8%, overtaking the radical leftist Syriza, who ruled from 2015 to 2019, with 20.1% of the vote.
Greece’s Interior Ministry estimated that New Democracy could win 145 seats in parliament, six short of an absolute majority.
On Monday, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will give the top three parties – New Democracy, Syria and the socialist PASOK – three days each to form a coalition government.
If all of those fail, Sakellaropoulou will appoint a caretaker government to prepare for new elections about a month later.
Prime Minister and leader of New Democracy Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he believed he had been given a clear mandate.
“The results of the ballot are decisive. They show that New Democracy has the approval of the people’s rule, strong and autonomous,” he told cheering crowds outside the party headquarters in downtown Athens.
The result was a surprise boost for Mitsotakis, whose administration has had to grapple with a wiretapping scandal, the Covid pandemic, a cost of living crisis and a deadly train crash in February that sparked public outrage.
In equal measure, it was a disaster for Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras, a flamboyant leftist who came to power in 2015 on the back of voters’ discontent with other parties over their handling of the debt crisis. Which devastated Greece’s economy for more than a decade. ,
A Syriza official said Tsipras telephoned Mitsotakis to congratulate him on the victory.
Greece nearly exited the euro in 2015 at the peak of its debt crisis, forcing the country to seek a third bailout from international lenders under Tsipras’ watch.
Mitsotakis, elected in 2019, portrayed himself as a safe running mate in his campaign to win the votes of just 10 million Greeks, promising wage and pension cuts during the crisis.
The result rewarded Mitsotakis’ focus on trying to improve financial conditions for Greeks, said Panos Koliastaysis, an adjunct assistant professor of politics at Peloponnese University.
“He also had a clear proposal (how) he would be in power – of an autonomous government. Syriza’s alternative to a coalition government was not so realistic because others refused to cooperate,” he said.
Elections are held every four years for a 300-seat parliament in Greece.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – reuters,
