Mitsotakis became the Prime Minister of Greece again after the elections

Posted by: 26/06/2023 – 16:54Changed: 26/06/2023 – 22:11

Crediting Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the past EU debt meltdown, voters gave the conservatives their widest margin of victory in almost 50 years on Sunday.

The centrist “Ta Nea” newspaper wrote with the title “No rival, Mitsotakis’s absolute advantage.”

Mitsotakis, who holds 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament, was sworn in as Greece’s prime minister after formally receiving the mandate to form a government from President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

“It is an honor to assume responsibility for a new four-year mandate,” he told the president, adding that “we will begin serious work on major reforms.”

Among the campaign promises are to tackle Greece’s low birth rate by pouring money into the country’s public health system, which has been stretched to its borders by the Covid-19 pandemic, and to improve railway safety after a train collision in February killed 57 people. it was Greece’s worst railway disaster.

Mitsotakis’ victory was followed by congratulations from world leaders.

“I look forward to continuing our close cooperation on common priorities to strengthen prosperity and regional security,” said US President Joe Biden, while French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to work with Greece towards a “stronger and more sovereign Europe”.

‘the court’

The 55-year-old former McKinsey consultant and Harvard graduate, who has led the EU country back from the pandemic to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already won a resounding victory in May’s election.

But he abandoned his bid to form a coalition after losing five seats in parliament to form a one-party government, forcing 9.8 million Greek voters back to the polls.

The gamble paid off, with his New Democracy party consolidating its victory in the May 21 vote, while its closest rival, the leftist Syriza party of former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, lost tens of thousands of voters in just one month. before.

Tsipras admitted a “serious political defeat” and said that he left his political fate to the “judgment” of Syriza members.

For many Greeks, Tsipras is the prime minister who nearly crashed Greece out of the euro and reneged on promises to end austerity to sign the country to more painful bailout terms.

To the dismay of centrists, Sunday’s sharp swing to the right was also accompanied by the return of the far-right to parliament.

Spartiates, backed by the jailed former spokesman of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, will make its parliamentary debut after crossing the three percent threshold.

Between the Spartiates and two other smaller nationalist parties with anti-immigration policies, they got about 13 percent of the vote.

Liberal Kathimerini newspaper called the new parliament “Babylon”.

For Tsipras, the strongest showing in decades by Greece’s hard-right parties was a “visible” threat to democracy.

New cabinet

Presenting his new cabinet, Mitsotakis appointed reliable problem solver George Gerapetritis as the next foreign minister of Greece.

Former foreign minister Nikos Dendias, a political moderate, is moving to the Defense Ministry to oversee the ongoing rearmament program against neighboring Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was himself re-elected last month, “expressed his wishes that the new era will be beneficial for Turkey-Greece relations,” the Turkish president’s office said on Monday.

“The presence of strong governments in both countries that reassure their people creates an opportunity for future bilateral relations,” Erdogan’s office said.

The new finance minister, Kostis Hatzidakis, is a lawyer and a former member of the European Parliament who heads the development, labor and transport ministries.

There are 15 women in the new cabinet, 4 of whom are ministers.

Mitsotakis, who became prime minister for the first time in 2019, has promised not only to make economic stability a feature of his new term.

He also advocated a hardline anti-immigration line, appealing to the conservative base in a campaign that did not mention the fatal sinking of an overcrowded trawler.

2023 AFP