Two antagonistic visions, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras, compete again this Sunday for power in Greece. Nearly 10 million Greeks are called this Sunday to vote in an election that, barring unforeseen events, is expected to be close, so much so that it is most probable that no party, neither the conservative New Democracy of Mitsotakis nor the leftist Syriza of Tsipras, will achieve the absolute majority to form a government.
Prime Minister Mitsotakis, an economic liberal with an iron fist on migration, is calling for four more years to finish turning the "new Greece." He has focused his entire electoral campaign on the economic growth that the country has experienced during his term, trying to avoid the two great crises that have worn him down. The first, a major scandal of illegal wiretapping on the phones of politicians, journalists and businessmen, including the leader of Pasok Nikos Androulakis, already known by the press as the "Greek Watergate".
The second, the public unrest caused by the train crash in March, which left 57 victims, most of them university students, and which provoked huge protests in the streets against the establishment due to the terrible state of the Greek railway infrastructure.
However, the impact of both crises does not seem to affect too much a campaign that has revolved around high inflation. Mitsotakis has an advantage in the polls, and would obtain over 36% of the votes, less than the almost 40% he obtained in 2019. Tsipras's Syriza follows with 29% of the votes. Further away would be the Social Democrats of PASOK, with 10%, and the communists (KKE), with 6.9%.
The guest in these elections is the electoral law with the proportional system that is put to the test for the first time. If in 2019 Mitsotakis was able to form a government without problems thanks to the bonus of 50 deputies that was given to the winner, this time this prize has been eliminated because, when Tsipras was in power, he alone changed the electoral system.
The leader of Syriza calculated that this measure would favor the creation of a left-wing coalition and also followed the historical claim of progressivism for a representative electoral law, but neither did the former prime minister, who calls for "ending the nightmare" of these four years governed by the right, it would be easy to form a coalition. Its most moderate voters would not approve a pact with the MeRA25 party, of the well-known former minister Yanis Varufakis, nor would the most left-wing ones see an alliance with Pasok well, and all these formations have made it clear that they would not support Tsipras.
So, most likely, this Sunday's appointment is a warm-up for an electoral repetition, probably in July, in which the electoral law elaborated by New Democracy in 2020 would already be applied, which reintroduces the premium of up to 50 seats for the victor. The Greek Constitution provides that it cannot enter into force in the legislature immediately after its approval, but in the following elections, with which it would already be valid in this second round.
“Everyone in Greece thinks that we will need new elections. The most important thing seems to be the advantage that ND has over Syriza. If the result is close and the advantage is two or three points, everything could be possible in the new elections and could be interpreted as a symbolic defeat for Mitsotakis. On the other hand, if the victory is significant, with a difference of more than four or five points over Tsipras, Mitsotakis would start out very strengthened in July," Nikos Marantzidis, professor of Political Science at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, told this newspaper.
