As Sunday’s election approaches, New Democracy is expected to secure a victory, potentially enabling it to form a government independently.
Aside from the main outcome, the performances of the two main opposition parties, SYRIZA and PASOK, hold significance for various reasons, including their leadership and internal structures.
Understanding the implications of the upcoming election results requires recognising that future governments, whether single-party or coalition, will likely be formed by New Democracy, SYRIZA, or PASOK, the three parties that have governed in the past.
Additionally, the percentage of votes going to parties outside Parliament will play a crucial role in shaping the political landscape.
Despite their differences, all three parties have shown pragmatism when in power, indicating limited changes to Greece’s direction regardless of which party or coalition comes into government.
SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras said at the party’s main campaign speech in Syntagma Square in Athens on Thursday night.
It will also show “how and with what kind of power social and political resistance will be organised,” he said, and will determine “what kind of Greece we want our children to live in.”
Tsipras stressed that there are only two alternative plans of rule and governance competing. One is SYRIZA’s plan of a country with justice and prosperity for all, fewer inequalities, equal access to medical services and drugs, and better pay, “where small and medium-sized business owners will not be destroyed by taxes in order for the oligarchs to enrich themselves.”
New Democracy, Tsipras charged, is “trying to hide this part of its plan” and announces commitments it will never honor, while hiding others it will. He also charged that “the real government program is the one that [ND leader Kyriakos] Mitsotakis tabled in Brussels two months ago as a Stability Program,” which “contains none of his electoral campaign announcements.” On the contrary, Tsipras said, he sees a drop in state expenditures for hospitals, schools, civil servant wages, and no new hirings in the National Health System and the civil service, except to replace those who retire.
New Democracy aims to surpass its previous election results, targeting a percentage higher than the 39.8 per cent achieved in 2019 and the 40.8 per cent in May. This would secure a comfortable majority in the 300-seat Parliament, similar to the 158 seats obtained four years ago.
Our greatest enemy at the ballot box is complacency, New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an interview on Mega TV on Thursday, and that sense that the electoral result is already set.
“Nothing should be taken for granted. The result of the first round [on May 21] provides us with a good indication of how the voters will lean in the June 25 elections. I will be happy if participation rises,” Mitsotakis said.
The ND leader clarified that there will be no new tax increase under his party’s second term, but further decreases instead. “My goal is to examine permanent reductions in VAT toward the end of the four-year term,” he underlined, turning down the main opposition’s price reduction proposals. “If the economy is effective, I believe it will be a feasible target in the second half of the four-year term,” Mitsotakis added.
The percentage of votes going to parties outside Parliament will significantly decrease compared to previous elections. Although smaller parties may enter Parliament, potentially making it more challenging for New Democracy to achieve an absolute majority, the likelihood of the party forming a government remains high.
A critical mass of the Greek people voted under the fear that worse was to come, not because New Democracy had done a great job, PASOK-Movement for Change (KINAL) leader Nikos Androulakis said on Thursday, in the central newscast for Mega TV.
“Let us quote the facts, which are revealing: 50 billion of a new debt, an external current account deficit higher than that of 2010 – we had 12 per cent last year, 9 per cent this year – and New Democracy saying ‘It happens in all countries’. Portugal had a 1 per cent deficit last year, a 1 per cent surplus this year. Two-thirds of the state’s revenues are indirect taxes, hitting at the middle class and the most vulnerable Greeks. And another element that is even more revealing is the shrinking of real wages by 7 per cent,” Androulakis said.
By voting for PASOK on Sunday, there will be an end to a fear for the worst, he noted. “We will have, in the first phase, a strong, reliable and progressive main opposition and in second phase a governmental, socialdemocratic choice of the contemporary center-left,” Androulakis asserted.
*With AMNA
