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Greek leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his centre-right New Democracy party won Sunday’s elections in a landslide victory and vowed to “transform Greece” in his second term.
After more than half of the votes were counted, the New Democracy Party won 40.5 percent of the vote, enough to govern without a coalition partner. The main opposition party, the left-wing Syriza, achieved 17.8 percent and the centre-left Pasok party came third with 12.1 percent.
“Our goals are high and must be high in a second term that can transform Greece,” Mitsotakis said on Sunday after the first results were announced. “We have both the plan and the experience to make all of this a reality,” he said. He pledged to fight inequality, improve public services and healthcare, and speed up digitization.
The Sunday elections came after New Democracy took first place in May but failed to secure an outright majority. Mitsotakis then resigned, knowing that the snap elections would be held on the basis of a new electoral law giving bonus seats to the leading party – a calculation that would be enough to form a government without coalition partners.
“Mitsotakis is now Greece’s unique and dominant political figure, in full control of his own party and parliament,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group. He said Mitsotakis’ reformist agenda had a chance to be implemented as he had no partner constraints.
A Mitsotakis win had been widely expected and markets reacted positively ahead of it, with equities and bonds staging a rally in recent weeks. The credit rating is likely to be upgraded to investment grade by the end of the year, a sign that Greece is emerging from decades of economic crisis.
During his election campaign, Mitsotakis repeatedly promised to shake up the healthcare and judiciary, which are among the slowest systems in Europe. “It won’t be easy,” said Dimitris Papadimitriou, a professor of political science at Britain’s University of Manchester. “For this he will encounter the most powerful lobbies in Greece and an extremely resilient bureaucracy.”
The left-wing opposition has failed to form a unified force. “This is not too dissimilar to the situation that prevailed in Germany at its peak [Angela] “Merkel’s political dominance, during which center-left support was split between three parties,” Papadimitriou said.
The party of Alexis Tsipras, who was prime minister in 2015-19 when Greece was on the brink of financial collapse and on the verge of leaving the eurozone, shrank even further. Syriza fell more than 22 points behind the ruling party, raising questions about Tsipras’ leadership in the opposition and his future.
The new parliament will also include some fringe parties from the extreme left and right. One in three voters have opted for anti-systemic and anti-democratic parties – a sign of resentment in a part of society that Mitsotakis must take into account, Papadimitriou said.
A surprise entry into parliament is a new far-right party, the Spartans, founded in May and backed by a jailed MP from the former neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. According to analysts, the Spartans, which reached almost five percent, is a new version of the banned party – and is likely to continue to polarize society and parliament over issues such as migration.