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Greece faces new national elections as early as June 25, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis confirming Monday he would not try to build a coalition government – despite having dominated the ballot hours earlier by the most decisive margin in half a century.
It was a tantalizing result for the center-right leader: although Mitsotakis slightly expanded his New Democracy party’s standing, got double the votes of leftwing Syriza and nearly four times those of third-place Socialist Pasok, the one-off electoral law in place Sunday denied him a governing majority.
He’ll now pin his hopes on a second vote – expected no later than July 2 – where the electoral system will revert to boosting the first party with a bonus of up to 50 of Parliament’s 300 seats. That system would have secured ND more than 170 seats Sunday.
With 99.70% of the votes counted, New Democracy has 40.79% and 146 seats, five short of a majority, winning in 58 of the country’s 59 constituencies. Syriza got 20.07% and 71 seats, while Pasok came in third at 11.46%. Turnout was 61%.
ND’s margin of victory far outstripped pollsters’ forecasts and was the biggest since 1974, when Greece’s first democratic elections were held after the fall of the seven-year military dictatorship.
Athenian Fotis Hatzos said that while he had expected ND’s win, its hammering of the main opposition party took him by surprise.
“What is there to say, (Mitsotakis) destroyed them,” he told The Associated Press. “He won fairly.”
Markets welcomed what seems to signal the end of the political uncertainty that troubled the NATO and European Union member following the 2009-2018 financial crisis, with the Athens stock exchange general index surging more than 7% Monday and Greek bonds rallying.
Mitsotakis, 55, met Monday with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, who formally gave him the mandate to try and form a government. But the Harvard-educated former banking executive said there would be no point.
“I can effectively see no way for the current parliament to form a government,” he said in a brief televised exchange.
