(ANSA-AFP) - ATHENS, 21 MAG - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos
Mitsotakis said his conservative party unleashed a "political
earthquake" with a thumping win at Sunday's election, as he
hinted that he would seek a new ballot to obtain an absolute
majority enabling it to govern alone. With just over 82 percent
of the ballot counted, his New Democracy party was credited with
40.8 percent of the votes -- a 20-point lead ahead of his
nearest rival, leftist challenger Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party,
which garnered 20.1 percent. Despite the clear win, the
conservatives were short of a few seats for an outright
majority, meaning that Mitsotakis had the choice of seeking a
coalition or a new ballot for a decisive result. The 55-year-old
made clear his preference. "The citizens want a strong
government with a four-year horizon," he said. "Today's
political earthquake calls on all of us to speed up the process
for a definitive government solution," he added. His rival
Tsipras also set the stage for a new vote, saying "the electoral
cycle is not over yet. The next battle, he said, will be
"critical and final". - Economic stability - Mitsotakis, a
Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant, had entered
into the elections as the favourite, with Greece currently
enjoying fairly robust economic health. Unemployment and
inflation have fallen and growth this year is projected to reach
twice that of the European Union's average -- a far cry from the
throes of a crippling debt crisis a decade ago. With a
post-Covid tourism revival lifting the country's growth to 5.9
percent in 2022, Mitsotakis has campaigned on a pledge to build
on the economic gains. Yet the fear that wages are not keeping
pace with rising costs remains a key concern for voters --
something his rival Tsipras sought to exploit. But the result is
a crushing blow to Tsipras, who has lost his fourth straight
electoral battle to Mitsotakis after serving as premier in 2015
to 2019, during which he led rocky negotiations with creditors
that nearly crashed Greece out of the euro. Tsipras lost a third
of his party's 2019 percentage, and in some areas trailed the
third-ranked socialist party Pasok-Kinal, led by 44-year-old
Nikos Androulakis. Another casualty Sunday was Tsipras' former
maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose anti-austerity
MeRA25 party failed to make it to parliament. Androulakis had
been seen early on as a potential coalition partner for
Mitsotakis, but things went sour when he discovered he had been
under state surveillance -- which is overseen by the prime
minister's office. The wiretap scandal, which erupted last year,
forced the resignation of the head of the intelligence service
and a nephew of Mitsotakis, who was a top aide in his office.
While it sparked an uproar, the spying saga did not seem to have
had much of an impact on the conservatives' results, which were
far better than the 6-8 percent lead predicted by pollsters in
the run-up to the election. Anger over a train crash that
claimed 57 lives in February also did not seem to have
significantly impacted the vote. The government initially blamed
the accident -- Greece's worst-ever rail disaster -- on human
error, even though the country's notoriously poor rail network
has suffered from years of under-investment. - 'We have a
future' - Welcoming the results, retiree Glykeria Tzima, 62,
said: "Democracy won today -- not only New Democracy, but
democracy as a whole. "We want to see a continuation of what was
created in the last four years and leave the toxicity behind us.
We, us Greeks, went through tough times and we saw that with
this government and this prime minister, we have a future." But
Georgios Koulouris, 60, a miner living in Australia who returned
to vote, said deep challenges and inequality plague the country.
"There is a part of the people who literally lives on small
change," he said, adding that Greece was suffering from a brain
drain because of stagnating salaries and exploding rents.
Turnout reached only 58 percent as many had likely sat out the
ballot given the anticipated second vote. bur-hmn/jph/rox
/ (ANSA-AFP).
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