Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis yesterday embarked on his second term as Greece’s prime minister with a vow to accelerate institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory for the second time in five weeks.
Crediting Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the erstwhile EU debt laggard, voters on Sunday gave the conservatives their widest winning margin in almost 50 years.
“No adversary, absolute dominance of Mitsotakis,” headlined centrist newspaper Ta Nea.
Photo: AP
Holding 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament, Mitsotakis was sworn in as Greece’s prime minister after officially receiving the mandate to form a government from Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
“It is an honor to take on the responsibility of a new mandate of four years,” he told the president.
“We will begin working hard for big reforms,” he added, underlining that he had pledged to “put in place major changes during the second four-year mandate.”
Among his campaign pledges is pouring money into the nation’s public health system — which was stretched to its limits by the COVID-19 pandemic — and improving railway safety after the deaths of 57 people in a February train collision that was Greece’s worst rail disaster.
Congratulations had poured in from world leaders swiftly after Mitsotakis’ victory.
“I look forward to continuing our close cooperation on shared priorities to foster prosperity and regional security,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron also promised to work together toward “a stronger and more sovereign Europe,” while Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani called Mitsotakis’ re-election “a sign of political stability that is good for the whole Europe.”
The 55-year-old former McKinsey consultant and Harvard graduate, who steered the EU nation from the pandemic back to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already scored a resounding win in an election last month.
However, having fallen short by five seats in parliament of being able to form a single-party government, he refused to try to form a coalition, in effect forcing 9.8 million Greek voters back to the ballot boxes.
The gamble paid off, with his party consolidating its win from the May 21 vote, while its nearest rival, the left-wing Syriza party of former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, saw a loss of tens of thousands of voters compared with just a month earlier.
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