FROM OUR REPORTER
ATHENS Stacks of Domino’s pizza boxes disappear into the metal detector and then into the elevator at Nea Demokratia’s headquarters in Piraeus, where twilight gradually leads to a realization that the expected victory is indeed a triumph. Conservatives synced – 40.8% to 20.1% with almost 90% of ballots counted – Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza party.
Immediately after the pizza and just before the polls, outgoing (and reconfirmed yesterday) Prime Minister Mitsotakis also arrives and almost sails through the blue sea of the usually ordered Oxford shirts by militants, officials and even journalists who follow New Democracy all at least fifty, almost all men. The party has an overwhelming male majority, with only two ministers and eight secretaries out of the 58 members of the outgoing executive board; Finally, Greece has had a female prime minister only once, and that lasted a month.
Mitsotakis disappears behind the pizzas and barricades himself in the offices on the third floor. He will emerge after more than two hours between trumpets and roars to comment triumphantly on the first screenings. “The country has given us a strong and absolute mandate and we should govern alone,” he articulates, speaking of a “political earthquake” and of reforms “that can only be implemented with a full mandate.”
The plan is now clear and it is the announced one. With the electoral law that came into force, New Democracy wins 145 MPs, 6 fewer than the absolute majority. Now, of course, Mitsotakis could ally himself with Pasok, a former mass party that has now turned the balance with about 12% of the vote (many snatched from Syriza). But the Pasok leader, who was intercepted by the New Democracy government until last summer, didn’t want to know anyway; and Mitsotakis doesn’t want it. It is better not to reach an agreement and return to voting on the “second ballot”, a snap election that has already been declared failed almost 25 days after the consultations were declared, i.e. on June 25th or July 2nd. And with the new electoral law assigning a more decisive majority prize to the winner: if Mitsotakis gets yesterday’s votes in July, he would be entitled to so many MPs that he wouldn’t have to consult anyone, Pasha of a monochromatic blue.
Don’t wait any longer. International investors are less enthusiastic about the looming political paralysis: this is the first Greek election in which the country is no longer Europe’s watchdog, but markets’ bets on Greek debt have hit their highest levels since 2014.
Furthermore, yesterday’s results rule out the – already erroneous – hypothesis of a centre-left coalition between Pasok and Syriza, the party of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who promised yesterday morning: “Starting tomorrow we will change, we will be four years old leave behind us.” Inequality”. But in his party’s almost empty headquarters, the atmosphere was disarmed. Syriza’s headquarters are in Piazza Libertà, in the run-down heart of the capital (while Mitsotakis’ headquarters overlook the sea and the new pharaonic regulation plan which envisages a fleet of Emirates-style skyscrapers).
“I think the polls are lying,” insisted a T-shirt activist, Kostas, “a member of Syriza since 2004, so I’ve seen them all.” Today’s economic growth is also due to the economic policies that Tsipras wanted after 2015. People have to acknowledge this. We can’t win this time. And instead.
“Greek polls have a reputation for being unreliable,” explains Dora Antoniou, a political commentator who has followed Greek governments for the main national newspaper Kathimerini for two decades. “But since 2019, since it went into opposition, the Syriza party hasn’t overtaken Nea Demokratia for even a week.” According to the polls, they are firmly below 6%. It got worse. “People have not forgiven Tsipras for 2015. They had won the elections by promising to defy the troika. Above all, they capitulated and we all had to grit our teeth.” At the time, following the executive meant “living with a suitcase in hand”. Brussels, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Brussels again. My dream job, but I was terrified. We walked around with sacks full of cash: the cards were frozen. Every day we withdrew a maximum of 60 euros from the bank and lent each other.” Isn’t this austerity also part of the growth? “There is a debate. He said in 2019: I will leave a budget surplus of 30 billion to the next government. People hated him even more: they felt unfairly squeezed. In addition, he shoots them large and claims moral superiority. He says the Mitsotakis years are the worst since the colonels. “Honestly, the crisis years were a little worse.”