(CN) — Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Harvard-educated and pro-business scion of a Greek political dynasty, was sworn in for a second term as prime minister on Monday after trouncing a splintered left-wing opposition in a second round of national elections.
Mitsotakis, leader of the conservative New Democracy party, vowed to carry forward his Wall Street-oriented modernization program and turn the page on a decade of catastrophic economic crisis that saw the country's oversized public debt threaten to implode the euro currency.
On Sunday, Greeks went to the polls for a second time after elections in May did not yield a majority for New Democracy. The new election reverted to a proportional representation system that awards extra parliamentary seats to the winner.
New Democracy once again picked up about 40% of the vote and gained a clear majority after it received the bonus seats. The center-right party now commands 158 seats of the 300 in Greece's unicameral Hellenic Parliament, a body also known as the "Bouleuterion" after the name given to citizens' councils in ancient Greece.
“The people have given us a safe majority,” Mitsotakis said Sunday night. “Major reforms will go ahead quickly.”
Mitsotakis cruised to a second term despite signs of a worrisome authoritarian lurch in Greece that's been compared to trends in Hungary and Poland. Mitsotakis and New Democracy have helped oversee that shift.
Mitsotakis originally came into office in 2019 by defeating the hard-left Syriza government, which was severely weakened by tough austerity measures imposed by the European Union. Syriza, a combination of communist-inspired parties, got to power in 2015 as Greece's first far-left government since the restoration of democracy in 1974. It opposed belt-tightening dictates but was later compelled to impose them as it faced the prospect of Greece getting booted from the EU.
In Sunday's vote, Syriza came in a distant second, with only 17% of support — a drop of about 3% from May's ballot. The result left the future of Syriza leader and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in doubt, though Tsipras defiantly has chosen to not step down.
It was a bad election for others on the left, too. Pasok, Greece's traditional center-left mainstay, brought in only about 12% of the votes. MeRA25 — a small left-wing party founded by Yanis Varoufakis, a popular intellectual and Tsipras' former finance minister — failed to make the 3% threshold to get seats in parliament.
An economist by training, Varoufakis left Syriza at the height of Greece's debt crisis because he opposed accepting austerity in exchange for an International Monetary Fund financial bailout packaged by the EU. The debt crisis and ensuing austerity left Greece suffering from one of the worst economic depressions experienced by any Western nation during peacetime.
Now, with the economy on the rebound, Greeks clearly favor Mitsotakis' pitch to open Greece up to more foreign investment and privatization, streamline and reduce government by putting more services online, strengthen the military and tighten borders.
Still, Mitsotakis starts a second term plagued by doubts about his commitment to democratic principles.
He has been implicated in a far-ranging domestic spying scandal that saw Greece's intelligence agency surveil opposition leaders, journalists, lawyers and members of his government. The prime minister has also faced criticism for brutal border policing, nepotism, pandering to Greek oligarchs and adopting far-right rhetoric in an effort to stave off challengers even further to his right.
Perhaps the biggest and most troubling surprise in Sunday's elections was just that: the entrance into parliament of three small extremist parties from the far right.
These include Niki (Greek for “victory”), a party founded by a theologian, linked to the Greek Orthodox Church and opposed to abortion, sex education and same-sex couples. The party espouses an ultra-nationalist ideology and disagrees with Greece's military support for Ukraine, arguing instead that Ukraine should stay neutral and out of NATO. It got 10 seats in parliament.
Then there is Greek Solution, an ultra-nationalist party that won 12 seats. Its ideology is also deeply religious, nationalistic, pro-Russian and anti-migrant. But the most troubling development was the late surge of the Spartans, a party that recently included a convicted neo-Nazi from the banned Golden Dawn as one of its backers. It too won 12 seats.
“The outcome of the vote means that Greece is set to have the most right-wing parliament since the restoration of democracy in 1974,” said Wolfango Piccoli, an analyst at Teneo, a London-based political risk firm.
“Mitsotakis will have the votes he needs to get legislation through parliament," but the fringe parties will “have a platform from which to broadcast their populist message and attempt to disrupt the government’s agenda," Piccoli said.
“The far-right parties will likely exploit politically toxic issues like migration, the relationship with Turkey, abortion, the role of religion in education [and] Russia sanctions to try to corner the government,” he said in a briefing note. “It remains to be seen how Mitsotakis — often perceived to be more vulnerable to attacks from the far right given his distinct liberal, center-right orientation — will manage to deal with the possible challenge posed by far-right opposition lawmakers.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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