“The May 21 ballot is the one that will determine everything,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told local residents Saturday while visiting the Athens suburb of Koukaki as part of his pre-election campaign.
It is this ballot, he insisted, which “will send a strong message: that the country will not be turning back, and that all we accomplished through several hardships over the last four years will not be undermined, and the country’s growth trajectory will continue uninterrupted.”
He also stressed that Greek citizens remember very well where Greece stood in 2015, in 2019 and now, in 2023, reiterating that the “simple proportional representation system is a recipe for non-governance,” underlining that stability and efficiency are currently the most important priorities.
Mitsotakis noted that the tourism season in Greece this year is going to be an excellent one, “the result of hard work.”
While the current prime minister was giving his speech at the foothill of the Acropolis, in the neighbouring suburb of Nea Smyrni, SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras was stating that his party “will be victorious in the country’s first ballot on May 21”.
The main opposition party leader met and chatted with local residents, pointing out his belief that his party “will defeat the Mitsotakis system and give rise to a government comprised of progressive political forces.”
Tsipras also called on the prime minister to a televised debate “about the country’s real problems” to be held on a TV station and journalist of the premier’s choosing, AMNA reported.
Referring to SYRIZA’s program for the protection of primary homes, business premises and agricultural land, he said this proposes a “fair regulation of private debt by directly axing personal debts.” He emphasised that the party’s program is realistic, and it will enable debt settlement not only for vulnerable households but also for the middle class: “We have a plan to stop the incredible redistribution of wealth at the expense of the many,” he noted stressing that Greek people will soon “turn their back on Mitsotakis”.
On a similar note, PASOK-Movement For Change party in a statement issued on Saturday evening In the face of “impending defeat and people’s rejection, the unrepentant prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has already exhibited disrespect to institutions by pre-emptively announcing second elections in July,”.
Leader Nikos Androulakis criticised the Greek premier’s Saturday interview to SKAI TV, saying that “tried to keep up the single elections pretence by referring to the May 21 national elections as “just the one ballot.”
PASOK slammed Mitsotakis further by saying that “people experience the results of government policy every day, despite the fictitious image that Mitsotakis wants to nurture,” adding that “the prime minister -who abolished the public character of the National Health System in a recent law and who consciously chose not to strategically fund it from the Recovery Fund- today promised to reform it.”
All this, the party concluded, happens at a time when people are faced with a tsunami of price hikes, including in basic foods, while overall price hikes exceed the European average.
