Official results from nearly 90 percent of voting centres nationwide on Sunday showed Mitsotakis’s party with just over 40 percent of the vote, with his main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, suffering a crushing defeat with just under 18 percent, even worse than its 20 percent in the last elections in May.. Syriza led by the former Prime Minister Alexis Tipiras tried to seek the help of other left wing groups to challenge the ruling NDP but the move did not succeed. The mandate in the June 25 polls was in favour of NDP forming a government on its own to stabilise the Greece economy which is in turmoil.

Mitsotakis hailed the “strong mandate” after the landslide victory. “The people have given us a safe majority. Major reforms will proceed rapidly,” he said in a televised address..However, the experts point out that the NDP won this time convincingly because of a change in election rule under which the leading party gets some bonus seats. This helped the NDP though the total vote percentage was down to 40 per cent from 41 per cent in the May 21 elections.

Sunday’s vote came just over a week after a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece, leaving hundreds of people dead and missing and calling into question the actions of Greek authorities and the country’s strict migration policy. But the disaster, one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years, did not heavily influence the election, with domestic economic issues at the forefront of voters’ minds.

Mitsotakis, a Harvard University graduate, comes from one of Greece’s most prominent political families. His late father Constantine Mitsotakis served as prime minister in the 1990s, his sister served as foreign minister and his nephew is the mayor of Athens. He has promised to rebrand Greece as a pro-business and fiscally responsible eurozone member. He is liked by the foreign investors. He has promised to bring Greece out of the present economic problems and ensure stability in the next four years of his term.

Syriza leader Tsipras was prime minister during some of the most tumultuous years of Greece’s economic crisis, but the 48-year-old struggled to regain the wide support he enjoyed when he swept to power in 2015 on a promise of reversing bailout-imposed austerity measures. Tsipras as the Prime Minister during that period as also later as the opposition leader had to face severe criticism from the trade unions for failing to fight the austerity measures which had hit the workers badly.

Since coming to power in 2019, Mitsotakis has delivered unexpectedly high growth, a steep drop in unemployment and a country on the brink of returning to investment grade on the global bond market for the first time since it lost market access in 2010 at the outset of the financial crisis. Mitsotakis got the full support of the Greek businessmen and he was liked by the international financial institutions which had problems with the Syriza during its tenure in the government.

Following the latest Greece elections, the left parties of Greece including the main opposition Syriza and also the KKE, the party of the Greek communists have to assess the developments and find out the reasons for their failure in the June 25 elections. The trade unions are strong in Greece and the left has big influence among the students and the cultural workers. In the last four years since 2019, there has been erosion of the base of the Left. There has to be an honest introspection and on that basis, new strategy has to be worked out. (IPA Service)