Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, wins another four years in office. Source: DTRocks, Wikimedia Commons
The conservative New Democracy party has won a landslide victory on Sunday in Greece’s second election in five weeks, giving Kyriakos Mitsotakis another four years as prime minister.
Official results from almost 90 per cent of voting centres across Greece showed Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s party with just over 40 per cent of the vote with his main rival, the left-wing Syriza party with under 18 per cent.
The country’s new leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a former banker and scion of a powerful political family. Mitsotakis has promised to boost revenue from the tourist industry, create jobs, and increase wages.
“This freely given support only increases my responsibility to respond to people’s hopes. I personally feel an even stronger obligation to serve the country with all my abilities,” Mr Mitsotakis told supporters at the New Democracy headquarters in Athens.
Just over a week before Sunday’s vote, a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece, leaving hundred dead and missing. This tragic incident raised concerns regarding the actions of Greek authorities and the country’s strict migration policy under Mitsotaki’s rule.
But despite this disaster being one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years, it did not affect the election, with voters caring more about domestic economic issues.
The Syriza party rose to power in 2015 during at the peak of a debilitating debt crisis, but then lost in 2019 to New Democracy.
Mitsotakis’s main rival, Alexis Tsipras, served as prime minister for these years, and after Sunday’s election is now fighting for his political survival.
Tsipras had struggled to rally his voter base after his poor showing in May elections, and the task was made even more complicated by splinter parties formed by some of his former associates.
