Polls indicate that the dispute is between the party of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and his predecessor, Alexis Tsipras.
Greece holds elections this Sunday (May 21, 2023) to choose the 300 members of its Parliament. The legislative election will take place at a time when the country is struggling to recover from a long economic crisis and is facing popular demonstrations.
The election will also choose the new prime minister. The prime minister is appointed by the president, but is generally the leader of the party or coalition with the highest representation in Parliament.
The most recent poll of the portal’s voting intentions Political indicates that the dispute is between the center-right party New Democracy, led by current Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the leftist Syriza party (Coalition of the Radical Left, in Portuguese), of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Mitsotakis seeks to get rid of the so-called “Greek Watergate” –a scandal of spying on politicians, journalists and businessmen by the country’s secret services– and overcome protests from the population (read more below).
in your favor, has the performance of the Greek economy during the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, even living a prolonged crisis. Greece grew 5.9% in 2022 – a result that the European Commission classified as “over and above”. The index is higher than that of the EU (European Union), which he had growth of 3.5% last year.
“Buoyant private consumption, significant investment activity and the impetus provided by the tourism recovery during the summer contributed to the strong growth performance”, said the agency. The document also stated that “the GDP [Produto Interno Bruto] real rose considerably in the last quarter of 2022, despite widespread pressures on prices”.
But the news is not so good for the government in 2023. The European Commission disclosed on monday (15.may) the growth forecasts for this year and for 2024 of the bloc’s countries, showing that Greece should interrupt the good trajectory.
The country’s real GDP is expected to grow by 2.4% in 2023 and 1.9% next year. “Private consumption growth is expected to slow down significantly compared to last year’s post-pandemic recovery, in a context of loss of households’ real disposable income and a still negative savings rate”, declared the commission.
In the report, the EU executive body indicated that the Greek labor market “improved markedly in 2022 amid sustained job creation”. Nonetheless, “real wage growth is not expected to turn positive before 2024”.
That is, the good numbers in the economic area are not translating into financial relief for the Greeks – which could harm Mitsotakis’ party in the elections.
SCANDALS AND MANIFESTATIONS
Mitsotakis’ government faces disbelief from part of the Greek population over the so-called “Greek Watergate”. The case came to light in August last year, when it was discovered that Greece’s intelligence services, which report directly to the prime minister’s office, had bugged the cell phone of socialist Nikos Androulakis, leader of the second-largest opposition party, Pasok.
At the time, Mitsotakis said the monitoring was illegal and wrong. He also stated that he would never have approved it had he known.
It was later revealed that Androulakis had also been the target of a spyware made in Israel, the Predator, capable of turning a cell phone into a monitoring device by activating microphones and cameras.
In January of this year, Tsipras said that the Adae, the independent body charged with ensuring the security and privacy of communications, had confirmed that important figures in the armed forces were also placed under surveillance. Journalists Thanassis Koukakis and Stavros Michaloudis, government officials and businessmen were also monitored.
The prime minister’s government faced a new challenge at the end of February. Greece recorded popular demonstrations because of a collision between 2 trains which left 57 dead. According to Hellenic Train, the company responsible for the vehicles, 350 people were traveling in the carriages at the time of the crash followed by a fire. Part of Greek society and the press accuse the Mitsotakis government of not having acted to remedy known problems in the rail system.
The sum of all these factors led Mitsotakis to announce in March that he would bring forward the elections. The election was scheduled for July.
ELECTIONS
The lawsuit will choose 300 representatives to the Greek Parliament this Sunday (May 21). Acronyms must receive at least 3% of the national vote to be entitled to a seat.
According to the research of Political, the Prime Minister’s New Democracy, has 36% of the voting intentions. Syriza, owned by the former prime minister, has 29%. The centre-left Movement for Change alliance (of which Pasok is part) has 10%. The Communist Party of Greece appears with 7%.
The European Realist Disobedience Front, on the left, is next with 4% – the same percentage as the Greek National Party, on the radical right, and the right-wing Greek Solution.
Read the main promises of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras:
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