By Karolina Tagaris
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis will be sworn in as prime minister on Monday after a resounding victory in a repeat election on Sunday gave him a second four-year term.
Centre-right New Democracy gained 40.5% the vote and 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament, more than 20 points clear of the leftist Syriza, which ran the country from 2015-2019, including at the height of Greece’s decade-long economic crisis.
Mitsotakis, 55, a former banker and scion of a powerful political family, has promised to boost revenue from the vital tourist industry, create jobs and increase wages to near the European Union average.
“I never promise miracles. But I assure you that I will stay true to my national duty,” Mitsotakis said.
Greek newspapers hailed the result a “historic win,” with Ta Nea writing on its front page “Mitsotakis’s absolute dominance, with no opponent.”
He is due to visit President Katerina Sakellaropoulou on Monday to formally receive a mandate to form a government, after which he will be sworn in. The new cabinet is also expected to be announced on Monday.
Mitsotakis, who was prime minister from 2019 until stepping down in favour of a caretaker premier following an inconclusive May 21 vote, said he will push ahead with reforms to rebuild the country’s credit rating after the debt crisis which wracked the nation for a decade.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and a deadly rail crash in February exposed shortcomings in Greece’s health and public transport systems, soaring prices and economic hardship have more recently topped voters’ concerns.
Sunday’s vote was a heavy defeat for Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party, which lost more than 30 lawmakers.
It also saw three fringe right-win and nationalist parties – including the anti-immigrant ‘Spartans’, enter parliament with a combined 35 seats.
“This result is negative for democracy and society,” Tsipras said.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
