An unexpected result
As many readers of this blog will by now be aware, the national elections of Sunday 21st May ended in a near landslide victory for the governing party Nea Dimokratia and a major and unexpected defeat for the official opposition. In the days before the election, SYRIZA had still been polling around 6 per cent behind ND, and given the high proportion of undecided voters had been able to entertain some hopes of coming out on top. In the event it gained only half of the votes won by ND, the final count for the parties which exceeded the 3 per cent threshold for entry into Parliament being as shown in the table.
Giannis Varoufakis’s MeRA25 failed to gain entry to Parliament, receiving only 2.63 per cent of the vote, while two other minor parties which were not in the last Parliament, came closer: ΝΙΚΙ – Democratic Patriotic Movement at 2.92 per cent and Plevsi Eleftherias – Zoe Konstantopoulou at 2.89 percent.
Although the final result for Nea Dimokratia was only a few points ahead of that for the 2019 elections (39.85 per cent), where they benefited from the 50-seat bonus, the distribution was much wider across the country. ND prevailed in every regional unit except that of Rodopi in East Macedonia and Thrace. Most notably in Crete, typically a left-leaning area where SYRIZA led in all four regional units in 2019, ND swept the board. In Chania, two ND candidates were elected MPs – Sevi Voloudaki and Dora Bakogianni – along with SYRIZA’s Pavlos Polakis and KKE’s Alekos Marinakis.
Towards a second election
In the event, the result turned out to be theoretical. Without the benefit of the 50-seat bonus, ND remained 5 seats short of an absolute majority and the mechanism aimed at producing a coalition government went into action. The President Katerina Sakellaropoulou approached each of the three main party leaders in turn, inviting them to try to form a government. However, as was predictable from the parties’ pre-election statements, no-one wanted to play. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with his eye firmly the possibility of a second election – where the reinstated bonus of between 20 and 50 extra seats could provide ND with a good chance of gaining an absolute majority – refused the invitation. SYRIZA, smarting from their poor result, also declined, as did PASOK, who stuck to their pre-election refusal to share power with any other party. By Tuesday, two days after the election, the process for which 10 days was allowed by law was over, and on Wednesday the President called the party heads to a final meeting to try and reach a compromise. This was a mere formality, and following its failure the wheels were set in motion to appoint a caretaker government and set the date for a new election.
Appointment of a caretaker government
On the same day the President appointed the president of the Hellenic Court of Audit, Ioannis Sarmas, as caretaker prime minister with mandate to steer the country towards a second election, which is expected to take place on 25th June. On Thursday 25th May the 21 members of the caretaker government were officially announced, and on Friday they were sworn in at the Presidential Mansion.
Ministers were chosen for their experience in their relative fields. Foreign minister Vassilis Kaskarelis is an experienced diplomat with service in Washington and the European Union; the Defence ministry will be headed by Alkiviadis Stefanis, a former deputy defence minister and former chief of the Army General Staff. Heading the ministry of Citizen Protection, which will have to deal with critical issues such as natural disasters and forest fires, is former deputy minister of Citizen Protection Evangelos Tournas The new Health minister is Anastasia Kotanidou, a professor at Athens Medical School and head of intensive care at Evangelismos Hospital. Theodore Pelagidis, professor of economics at the University of Piraeus and deputy governor of the Bank of Greece, will take over the ministry of Finance.
In an initial cabinet meeting, Mr Sarmas told his ministers “we must be neutral, impartial, objective and weigh our actions and their consequences so that it should not be thought that they constitute an intervention for or against any faction in the coming electoral contest.”
A two-day Parliament
At the same time the wheels of official procedure continued to turn. The MPs elected on 21st May, now forming a kind of ghost Parliament, were sworn in at the Parliament building on Sunday before the President and the Archbishop of Greece Ieronymos. They then disbanded in order to meet again for a single session on Monday.
The morning session, presided over by a provisional Deputy Speaker, was devoted to electing a new Speaker, as required for the Parliamentary session which was to follow. Kyriakos Mitsotakis having proposed in a letter the existing Speaker Kostas Tasoulas, he was elected by an overwhelming majority, with only the 26 KKE MPs abstaining. Parliament then voted to elect 7 deputy speakers, as well as secretaries and administrators. After a lunchtime recess, the Speaker announced the results of the votes and then declared the session at an end. The Parliament’s short reign was over.
All that remained was for the President to issue an order declaring the Parliament dissolved and officially announcing the date of the new election as 25th June. The order was posted at the door of the Parliament shortly after 4.00 pm.
