ATHENS: Kyriakos Mitsotakis embarked Monday on his second term as Greece’s premier with a commitment to pace up institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory for the second time in just five weeks.
Crediting Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the erstwhile EU debt laggard, voters gave the conservatives their widest winning margin in almost 50 years on Sunday.
Hailing the “strong mandate”, Mitsotakis said that “major reforms will proceed rapidly”, adding that he had “ambitious” targets for his next four years in power that could “transform” Greece.
Among his pledges is pouring money into Greece’s public health system — which was stretched to its limits by the Covid-19 pandemic — and improving railway safety after the deaths of 57 people in a February train collision that was Greece’s worst rail disaster.
The 55-year-old former McKinsey consultant and Harvard graduate said Sunday that he “constantly strove to improve and learn from my mistakes”.
Mitsotakis, who steered the EU nation from the pandemic back to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already scored a resounding win in an election in May.
But having fallen short by five seats in parliament of being able to form a single-party government, he refused to try to form a coalition, in effect forcing 9.8 million Greek voters back to the ballot boxes.
The gamble paid off, with his New Democracy party consolidating its win from the May 21 vote, while its nearest rival, the left-wing Syriza party of former premier Alexis Tsipras, saw a loss of tens of thousands of voters compared to just a month ago.
Tsipras, acknowledging a “serious political defeat”, said he was leaving his political fate to the “judgment” of Syriza members.
For many Greeks, Tsipras is the prime minister who nearly crashed Greece out of the euro, and who reneged on a vow of abolishing austerity to sign the country on to more painful bailout terms.
To the dismay of centrists, the strong swing to the right was also accompanied by the return of the far right into parliament. “Fascists will enter parliament… this constitutes a completely toxic environment,” senior Syriza leader Costas Zachariadis told Skai TV. —AFP/APP
