ATHENS, Greece (AP) – For the first time in more than a decade, Greeks will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a leader who will no longer simply steer the country’s economy from the back seat.
Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is seeking a second term after a draconian regime of spending controls ordered by international bailout lenders ended last summer.
The clean-cut Harvard graduate, as comfortable speaking English as his native Greek, delivered unexpectedly high growth, a sharp drop in unemployment and a country on the verge of returning to investment grade in the global bond market.
Debts with the International Monetary Fund were settled early.
The re-election of Mitsotakis, 55, was once seen as a foregone conclusion. But his centre-right New Democracy party could struggle to return to power as Greece’s voters and political parties emerge from a long battle for survival.
On an unseasonably hot day in central Athens, taxi driver Christina Messari waited patiently in stop-and-go traffic near Greece’s parliament, where tourists roll bags around giant crimson banners erected by the Greek Communist Party to in his main electoral demonstration.
“The last four years have been like watching a heart monitor – up and then down … when business improves, prices go up, so you stay in the same place,” the 49-year-old said.
European governments and the IMF injected 280 billion euros ($300 billion) into the Greek economy between 2010 and 2018 to prevent the eurozone member from going bankrupt. In return, they demanded punishing cost-cutting measures and reforms.
A severe recession and years of emergency borrowing left Greece with a huge national debt that reached 400 billion euros last December and hit household incomes that will likely take another decade to recover.
Exhausted after the political and economic turmoil of the bailout era, ordinary Greeks sank into private debt, low wages and job insecurity.
Messari lost her bakery business during the crisis before joining her husband as a taxi driver. During the pandemic lockdowns, they switched to package delivery to make ends meet.
“I think things need to change so that people can live with some dignity and not just work to cover their basic expenses and pay taxes,” he said.
Mitsotakis lost a long-standing double-digit lead in opinion polls after a February 28 rail disaster that killed 57 people, many of them university students, despite the government’s narrative of acting as business-oriented modernizers.
A passenger train has collided with a freight carrier mistakenly placed on the same track in northern Greece. Train stations, it was later revealed, were understaffed and the security infrastructure was broken and outdated.
The European Parliament is also investigating a murky surveillance scandal after prominent Greek politicians and journalists discovered spyware on their phones. The revelations deepened mistrust among the country’s political parties at a time when consensus may be sorely needed.
Six political parties are set to gain national representation, from nationalists skeptical of NATO to a Communist Party expressing admiration for the Soviet Union 32 years after its collapse.
The far-right Greek Party, founded by a jailed former lawmaker with a history of neo-Nazi activities, was banned from participating by the Supreme Court.
Leading the opposition is Alexis Tsipras, 48, a former prime minister and leader of the left-wing Syriza party. His campaign has focused heavily on the rail disaster and the wiretapping scandal.
Opinion polls indicate Sunday’s election will not produce an outright winner under a newly introduced proportional representation system. A second election may be needed in early July, when the system would again favor the winning party with a bonus seat in parliament.
Even then, current polling data suggests Mitsotakis may be forced to form a coalition, with the once powerful socialist Pasok party, which all but disappeared during the crisis, potentially holding the balance of power.
“We don’t have a culture of consensus in our political system, it’s more zero-sum: if you lose, I win,” says Thodoris Georgakopoulos, editorial director of diaNEOsis, an independent think tank in Athens.
He argued that Greece has a rare opportunity to forge bipartisan decision-making, with the three largest political parties, New Democracy, Syriza and Pasok, all publicly committed to fiscal responsibility and deeper European Union integration.
A grace period of relatively low annual repayment bills for bailout loans will last another 10 years, he said: “By that time, we will have to have discovered a new productive model for the country.”
He added: “Many of our most important reforms have been left for last, in the justice system, education and the health sector, because they will be the most difficult. The challenge of these elections will be to find the necessary consensus between the country’s political forces so that these difficult reforms can be carried out.”
More than 9.8 million Greeks are eligible to vote in Sunday’s general election for 300 lawmakers in the unicameral parliament serving four-year terms. The voting age will be lowered to 17 for the first time, while in another first, Greek citizens living abroad will also be able to vote in their country of residence.
Polls at 22,000 polling stations will open at 7am (0400 GMT) and will remain open for 12 hours. The Ministry of the Interior estimates that 80% of the votes will be counted at 10 p.m.
