After a landslide victory in Sunday’s election, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday rejected President Katerina Sakellaropoulou’s offer to take a mandate and try to form a coalition government. He called for new elections within weeks to secure the majority he needs to govern alone.
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Hours after voting ended on Sunday, the 55-year-old prime minister said he would “follow all constitutional procedures” but made it clear he would not engage in coalition talks.
“I believe that the message of the voters was very clear. I do not believe that there are grounds to form a government from this parliament and I want to emphasize that if the electoral system that we will use in the next elections were in force yesterday, New Democracy would have a strong parliamentary majority of more than than 170 seats“, he said.
The Greek Prime Minister said that he would return the mandate, in order to pave the way for new elections.
With 99.55% of votes counted by early Monday, his conservative party won 40.79% of the vote, double that of the main opposition force, the leftist Syriza party which secured 20.07% of the vote.
Socialist Pasoku came in third place with 11.46% of the votes.
But the proportional system used in Greek election 2023 means New Democracy wins just 146 of parliament’s 300 seats, five short of what it needs for a governing majority.
The new elections, conducted with the previous voting system, would give the winning party up to 50 additional mandates.
That would give Mr Mitsotakis’s party a strong majority for a second term in power if Sunday’s result is repeated.
The victory of New Democracy inflicted the worst defeat on the opposition in half a century.
Analyst Solon Molho says that the victory of New Democracy was mainly a loss for Syriza, which according to him presented no alternatives.
“New Democracy presented more constructive arguments, not only presenting why the opposition is weak, but why it itself is the right alternative, what it wants to do over the next four years, and apparently voters are more interested in seeing forward rather than backward,” said analyst Molho.
Many Greek citizens said they had expected such a result, although perhaps not such a profound defeat for the opposition.
“I expected New Democracy to win, but not with this percentage. There is not much left to say, he (Mitsotakis) defeated them convincingly and won rightly, because Tsipras could not fulfill what Syriza had promised”, says Fotis Hatzos.
“I am satisfied. I expected it though not so deeply. I don’t believe that anything will change with the second round”, says Marta, a public sector employee.
Following are the official results of Greek election 2023 released by the Interior Ministry.
| PARTIES | VOTES % |
| ND | 40.8 |
| SYRIZA | 20.1 |
| PASOK | 11.6 |
| KKE | 7.2 |
| EL | 4.5 |
| Other parties | 15.9 |
The new elections, with the changed system, are expected to be held on June 25 or July 2.
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