Greece’s ruling New Democracy party won the parliamentary election on Sunday, with 40.8% of the votes. However, they fell short of the absolute majority needed to form a government on their own. Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will give the top three parties – New Democracy, Syriza, and the Socialist PASOK – three days each in turn to form a coalition government. If they all fail, Sakellaropoulou will appoint a caretaker government to prepare new elections about a month later.
Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he believed he was given a clear mandate. The result was a stunning boost for Mitsotakis, whose administration had to contend with a wiretapping scandal, the Covid pandemic, a cost of living crisis, and a deadly rail crash in February which triggered public outrage.
In equal measure, it was a disaster for Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras, a firebrand leftist catapulted to power in 2015 on the back of voters’ discontent with other parties over their handling of the debt crisis which ravaged Greece’s economy for more than a decade.
Greece almost crashed out of the euro at the peak of its debt crisis in 2015, forcing the country, under Tsipras’s watch, to take a third bailout from international lenders. Mitsotakis, elected in 2019, had portrayed himself as a safe pair of hands in his campaign, promising to raise wages and pensions cut during the crisis.
Elections in Greece are held every four years for the 300-seat parliament.
