As Greece goes to the polls, scandal, disaster and apathy eat into PM’s lead
With the Acropolis behind him, Kyriakos Mitsotakis ascends to the podium amid thunderous music and the cackle of whistles and horns. It is the last rally of the last day of his re-election campaign before polls open on Sunday, and the prime minister is in a combative mood.
“Do we want stability or continuous uncertainty?” he asks. “That is the dilemma we are being called to answer.” It is a question that has dominated an election that Mitsotakis once thought he had in the bag.
Four years ago, when the 55-yearold former financier stood in the same spot in Athens, punching the air, his victory had been a foregone conclusion. The landslide win for his New Democracy party was not only welcomed across the EU but brought an end to a rollercoaster decade of fragile coalition governments spawned by the nation’s debt crisis. And, on the back of Mitsotakis’s policy platform, the polls spoke, consistently giving his centreright party the lead over leftwing Syriza, the main opposition.
But winning a second term in office has proved less easy than Mitsotakis envisaged.
A phone-tapping scandal that brought back memories of the surveillance during Greece’s 1967-74 dictatorship provided ample ammunition for critics. Then in February, just when it seemed that crisis could be contained, a train crash in central Greece provoked fury. Fifty-seven people died in the collision and resulting fire – many of them students – in a tragedy that seemed to expose state incompetence as never before. The prime minister’s modernising narrative had been shattered.
“Mitsotakis has always presented himself as a liberal and a reformist but he became vulnerable at the 11th hour,” said Prof Aristides Hatzis, who teaches law at the University of Athens. “[Both events] undermined his liberal credentials and reformist efficacy.”
In the wake of the rail disaster on 28 February, the Harvard-educated Mitsotakis was forced to delay calling the election. When he did so a month later, his government’s standing had been severely dented, with thousands taking to the streets in protest. That, combined with a new electoral system of proportional representation, has ensured Sunday’s ballot will be more unpredictable than most, even if New Democracy has regained some of its lost ground.
Under the new rules – introduced by Mitsotakis’s leftwing predecessor, Alexis Tsipras – the winner has to get about 46% of the vote to secure a majority in the 300-seat parliament, a feat seen as practically impossible.
“If New Democracy picks up 33 % of the vote, it will have been a very decent result,” said Maria Karaklioumi, a political analyst at the polling company Rass. “Everybody around the prime minister thought it would be an easier ride. Short of a very big surprise, Greece will have to hold a fresh election in July because the possibility of a coalition government being formed appears very slim.”
Although New Democracy has led in the polls, no survey has suggested Mitsotakis getting more than 36.9%. On Friday, an MRB poll conducted for Open TV gave the ruling party 31.4%, compared with Syriza on 26.4%.
“In 2019, Mitsotakis’s campaign was all about the promise of transforming Greece into a western democracy,” said Karaklioumi. “This time he’s invested in fear, and it’s been all about what might happen if Tsipras was allowed to govern again.”
Government officials have been made more skittish by the number of undecided voters: at just under 13% of the electorate, most of those who have yet to make up their minds are centrists more inclined to support ND.
Apathy has injected further uncertainty: at the end of an unusually lowkey race, noticeably bereft of debate about the future, many have indicated they will abstain. “If I vote, I’ll decide at the ballot box,” said Niovi Fotiou, a 30-year-old hairdresser. “They all make these promises. Tsipras says he’ll be raising wages, but really it’s difficult to have any faith that any party can make a difference. My salary, with inflation, has been cut by around 10%. Everyone I know is worried about the cost of living crisis.”
Few deny the country has made headway. Despite seeing over a quarter of its GDP erased by austerity and recession a decade ago – the price of being bailed out by the EU and IMF to avoid bankruptcy – Greece has emerged as one of the fastest-growing eurozone economies. As Greece braces for a bumper tourism season, there is none of the desperation of the crisis years: streets once home to shuttered stores and empty buildings are bustling with restaurants and hotels.
But complaints about corruption, police brutality, heavy-handed migration policies and Mitsotakis’s preoccupation with the media have all fuelled demands for a change and what Tsipras has called the “need for Greece to become a normal European country”.
Even if, as seems likely, Sunday’s vote is inconclusive, these are concerns that are unlikely to fade before Greeks go to the polls again.