The date for national elections has now been set at 21st May. On Friday 21st April, the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou to confirm the date, and shortly after 8.00 pm on the same day, the Presidential Decree announcing the dissolution of Parliament was posted outside the Presidential Mansion. By convention, the members of the current government remain in their posts until the election date, with the exception of the minister of the Interior, who is replaced with a stand-in, and the Government spokesman who is replaced by the minister of State.
The electoral system
The election will be conducted on a system of party-list proportional representation in which multiple candidates are elected through their position on an electoral list – the previous system, which allotted a 50-seat bonus to the party gaining the most votes, having been abolished by the SYRIZA government in 2016. Shortly after coming to power in 2019 the current government passed legislation reintroducing a conditional bonus of 20 to 50 seats for the leading party, but as it was unable to achieve the two-thirds majority vote required by the Constitution for its immediate implementation, the change is deferred until the next election after the current one. With neither the ruling party (Nea Dimokratia) nor the official opposition (SYRIZA) appearing likely to achieve an absolute majority, a coalition government seems the most probable outcome.
According to Article 37 of the Constitution, the President of the Republic designates as Prime Minister the head of the party which gains an absolute majority of parliamentary seats. If there is no absolute majority, the President then invites the head of the party winning the highest number of seats to try and form a government. If this is not achieved within three days, the invitation is passed to the party with the second highest number of seats, and failing that to the party with the third highest number. A maximum period of 9 days is allowed for this process and if a government has still not been formed, the President of either the Council of State, or the Supreme Court, or the Court of Auditors is tasked with forming an interim government which will be acceptable to all parties, to allow the dissolution of Parliament and the setting of a date for a new election.
The leaders make their pitches
With the pre-electoral period now under way, the leaders of all the parties are touring the country, honing their policies and making their pitch to the electoral public. Nea Dimokratia (polling at around 30 per cent of the total vote, some 5 percentage points ahead of SYRIZA) currently seems to be the only party with an outside chance of achieving an absolute majority, and the Prime Minister is pressing voters to return him to power on the grounds that the country needs stability and continuity, especially in terms of the economic progress the country has made over the past four years. Any other result, he is suggesting, will mean a coalition government, probably of parties of the left, which will likely undo the progress made and return the country to instability.
Since none of the other parties has a realistic chance of achieving an absolute majority, discussions are focussing on who would be prepared to work with whom in a coalition. Here things are complicated by the fact that none of the smaller parties will say they would enter a coalition with the current official opposition SYRIZA – though as the second-highest polling party it is likely to be the next one to be invited to form a government if Mr Mitsotakis fails. Their fear is that they may find themselves in company with Mera25, the party of ex-SYRIZA finance minister Giannis Varoufakis, who as part of their electoral platform have put forward a plan for creating an alternative digital currency, the “Dimitra”, which would allow direct transactions between individuals, avoiding the fees exacted by the banks for card transactions. Despite the party’s protestations to the contrary, this is being widely interpreted as evidence of Mr Varoufakis’s desire to “blow up the banks and take Greece out of the euro”.
Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the third highest polling party, PASOK – Movement for Change (itself a coalition of two parties), was found to have had his phone tapped by the Greek intelligence services before he became party leader. The preservation of individual liberties is therefore one of the main planks of his pre-electoral policy and he has said that he would be willing to go into coalition, but not with any government which had either Mr Mitsotakis or SYRIZA’s leader Alex Tsipras as Prime Minister. A further complication is that Mr Androulakis has hitherto been a Euro MP and not in the Greek Parliament, which means that were he to be called on to form a government, he could not be the Prime Minister. He has so far been coy about who would be chosen as Prime Minister in such an event, leading to humorous speculation in the media as to whether people would be prepared to vote for “the party of Prime Minister X”. Clearly, these seemingly entrenched positions may shift in the light of the actual election results.
The Prime Minister in Chania
Beginning his electoral campaign in his home town of Chania, on the evening of 21st April, the Prime Minister addressed a large crowd of supporters at an open meeting in Katechaki Square on the old harbour. It was a festive occasion with a backdrop of the harbour and the Venetian lighthouse against a setting sun, and a forest of blue and white flags – the national standard interspersed with those of Nea Dimokratia. MPs, electoral candidates, media personalities and high-ranking civil servants were seen among the audience, while an army of students with bullhorns repeatedly chanted their support for Mitsotakis as Prime Minister.
The latter began by reminding his audience of the strength he derives from his roots in the island and in Chania, and from the memory of his parents, Konstantinos and Marika Mitsotakis whom, he said, “I feel among us today, inspiring our struggle with the same, as ever, passion for our homeland Crete and Greece.”
The past four years
Reviewing the past four years, he listed the many problems which the government had had to face: “From the hybrid attacks on the Evro and the invasions of refugees to the constant threats [from Turkey], and from the waves of the pandemic to the war in Ukraine with all its consequences, the international energy crisis and the consequent inflation.” No government since the restoration of democracy after the fall of the Junta, he suggested, had had to face so many obstacles in such a short space of time, and yet it had overcome them.
Recalling the pre-election commitments he had made, once more in Chania, in 2019, he said “I told you that I wanted to reduce taxes and insurance contributions, bolster the income of Greeks, strengthen our frontiers, unite the community and upgrade Greece’s international standing. So the question is, did we do all that? And the answers is yes, we did it.” In the past four years, he said, the government has reduced property and income taxes, abolished the tax on parental gifts, reduced the burden on businesses and increased pensions. It has increased the minimum wage, created 300,000 new jobs, and seen record growth in investments and exports. Among improvements in infrastructure, he cited the progress of the new VOAK, reiterating his personal commitment to see a modern motorway built “from Kissamos to Sitia”.
Future commitments
Yet he would be the first to admit that not everything has been perfect, and there remain outstanding commitments from his pre-election pledges of 2019. Nor would he cite the many obstacles the government has faced as excuses for a failure to meet their aims. Looking forward, he identified five major priorities for action:
– to increase salaries by 25 per cent over a four-year period;
– to create a reliable public health system;
– more effective public services, with consistent standards of recruitment through Central Staff Recruitment Board competitions;
– better accommodation for students, with modern flats to be built on public land with private funds;
– a stronger Greece, with continuation of the 68 defence projects already in progress and a more consistent immigration policy to go hand-in-hand with European initiatives.
Criticism of the opposition
Turning his attention to the official opposition, he criticised SYRIZA for its obstructive attitude during the last four years – saying “no to defence agreements, no to national armament, no to the fence on the Evro, no to investment, no to tax relief.” More recently, there was the “senseless” decision to withdraw SYRIZA from parliamentary voting during the period before the election, and finally the restoration of proportional representation as a “trap” for Nea Dimokratia, having themselves benefited from the 50-seat bonus in two successive elections. The first – by their refusal to participate in a vote for legislation aimed at excluding ex-members of the fascist party Chrysi Avgi from Parliament – was turning a blind eye to fascism, and the second brought nearer the danger of ungovernability, the Prime Minister said.
The challenge of the election
Coming to a conclusion, Mr Mitsotakis said that the forthcoming election on 21st May represents a challenge for voters: “Then, we will be called upon to answer some simple questions: do we move forward or turn back? Do we want results or a return to lies? Do we want yesterday with cuts and taxes, or tomorrow with better salaries?” In short, he said, “Do we want Nea Dimokratia with Prime Minister Mitsotakis, or do we want SYRIZA with Prime Minister Tsipras. That is the central question which the citizens will answer on 21st May.”
Raising the spectre of a “political monster” – a coalition between “SYRIZA, PASOK and Varoufakis” under Alexis Tsipras as Prime Minister – Mr Mitsotakis suggested it was a recipe for paralysis, inviting his audience to consider the result if such a government were faced with the crisis on the Evro, with major financial decisions, or the moment of a sudden Turkish invasion. There can only be one answer, he said “a self-reliant Greece, and a majority government of Nea Dimokratia”.
(Haniotika Nea, ERT. The full video of the Prime Minister’s speech can be seen here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc1YlOrIkj8)
SYRIZA’s response
Three days later, the SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras delivered an address from the same site in Katechaki Square, most of which was spent in dismantling the claims of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and accusing the current government, and in particular the Prime Minister, of favouring the oligarchs and profiteers (the power companies and supermarket chains), stealing SYRIZA ideas and claiming them as their own (the new VOAK), not knowing what was going on under his administration (the poor state of the railways leading to the accident at Tempe) and allowing the deep state to run riot (the wiretapping scandal). Finally he accused him of “hiding in the Megaro Maximo” for fear of the citizens.
It was a polished, populist performance, designed to appeal to people’s sense of injustice, but short on details of the party’s programme should they get to form a government.
(ERT/YouTube. The full video of Alexis Tsipras’s speech can been seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVow35crwNE)