Greece Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis won the national election but failed to reach the majority, Al Jazeera reported.
With most of the votes, Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party was 40.83 per cent of the votes, ahead of the left-wing Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras, which had 20.1 per cent. The projections from Greece’s interior ministry showed New Democracy falling six seats short of an outright majority in parliament, leaving Mitsotakis with the choice of building a coalition or bringing about a new ballot for a decisive result, reported Al Jazeera.
Hailing his party’s big victory as a “political earthquake,” Mitsotakis hinted that he would seek another election in order to secure an absolute majority that would allow the party to govern alone.
The election was held under a new law of proportional representation, which makes it particularly difficult for any party to win enough parliamentary seats to form a government on its own.
If a second election is held, probably in late June or early July, the law will change again, shifting to a system that rewards the leading party with bonus seats and making it easier for the frontrunner to secure a parliamentary majority.
After winning the election, Nikos Dendias, the foreign minister in Mitsotakis’s government said that the result was a great surprise, reported Al Jazeera citing Greek public broadcaster TV ERT.
Early reactions from New Democracy officials suggest that a new election is well on the cards, with June 25 now being floated as a likely date.
“It’s a huge surprise … an amazing result,” Dendias said.
Takis Theodorikakos, a minister and a senior New Democracy official, told private TV station Skai that the result suggested that the conservatives could garner enough in a second election “to continue the reforms as an autonomous government”.
Senior Syriza official Dimitris Papadimoulis, a European Parliament vice president, told TV ERT that if confirmed, the result would be “significantly far” from the party’s goals and would mark a failure to rally opposition to the government.
When winning the election in the early vote count, government spokesperson Akis Skertsos said, “[The exit polls] show a clear victory for New Democracy and a clear renewal of the mandate to continue the major changes sought by Greek society,” reported Al Jazeera.
Sunday’s election is the first in Greece since its economy ceased being under strict supervision by international lenders who had provided bailout funds during the country’s nearly decade-long financial crisis.
Mitsotakis, a 55-year-old Harvard-educated former banking executive and global management firm consultant, won the last election in 2019 on a promise of business-oriented reforms and has promised to continue tax cuts, boost investments and bolster middle-class employment.
His popularity took a hit following a February 28 rail disaster that killed 57 people after an intercity passenger train was accidentally put on the same rail line as an oncoming freight train. It was later revealed that train stations were poorly staffed and safety infrastructure broken and outdated.
