Greece will hold its next general elections on May 21, the Greek Prime Minister, the conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced Tuesday.
In a live televised meeting of the Council of Ministers, Mitsotakis called these elections to elect a new Parliament and Government, thus confirming his advancement in a month, since the current legislature ends in June.
According to the most recent polls, Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party leads the electorate with 30%, followed by the main opposition force, the leftist Syriza, which would get 26%, and the social democrat Pasok-Kinal. (10%).
Despite the fact that the polls do not predict for any party the minimum percentage of 45% necessary to obtain an absolute parliamentary majority, Mitsotakis stressed that he aspires for his party to achieve it, and made it clear that if it is not possible to form a new Government after the May vote, the Greeks will be summoned to the polls for the second time “at the beginning of July.
The May elections will be held with a new proportional electoral system that eliminates the 50-seat bonus for the first party, with which Mitsotakis obtained an absolute parliamentary majority in the July 2019 elections.
However, if a second vote is necessary for July, this time it will be with a system in which the first party could access a bonus of up to 50 seats, depending on the percentage of ballots obtained.
During his speech before the cabinet, the Prime Minister reviewed his four years at the head of the country, stating that his Executive knew how to effectively manage multiple crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy crisis and the “provocations” in Turkey.
Despite these challenges, “we fulfilled all our pre-electoral promises,” said Mitsotakis, while, after alluding to the railway accident that on February 28 caused the death of 57 people in central Greece, he promised to fight to eliminate chronic deficiencies of the Greek state if he is re-elected as head of government.
