Greece calls on voters to cast their ballots again
Greece will hold another general election on Sunday. The conservative Nea Dimokratia of Kyriakos Mitsotakis won the elections on 21 May by a large margin but failed to achieve an absolute majority in parliament. In this election a new electoral law will apply that grants the winner a bonus of up to 50 seats in parliament.
Yearning for normality
Maria Karaklioumi, political analyst at the polling institute RASS, describes the mood in Greece on news website Liberal:
“The Greeks have not suddenly become right-wingers or supporters of the conservative party Nea Dimokratia, nor do they see Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the messiah. They are citizens who have gone through difficult times with the austerity memoranda and the pandemic. They are politically and economically wounded, and above all their hopes have been dashed. ... Disappointment with the 'first left-wing' [Syriza] government led to the realisation that a better future is not in sight. They are not counting on their lives improving, and would be happy if they can simply go about their lives undisturbed and without surprises. That is why the majority of them voted for Kyriakos Mitsotakis.”
Orbán's spectre hanging over the country
The situation in Greece could get even worse in Mitsotakis's second term, web portal News247 worries:
“The model of 'one-party democracy' and the 'all-powerful prime minister', which is unprecedented for Greece, is fashioned after Orbán: authoritarian governance and state despotism, suffocating media control and the restriction of civil society. ... We've seen many of these phenomena in the first four years under Mitsotakis. The way things are going, we will see them in their most acute form during his second four-year term. The spectre of Orbán hangs over Greece, but society does not seem to recognise the danger.”
At least the Greeks still vote
Dnevnik compares Bulgaria's political situation with that of Greece:
“In our southern neighbour, voter turnout is more than 20 percent higher than here (61.1 percent there compared to only 40.69 percent in the last elections here). ... For one thing, our neighbours have a more solid political and civic culture as part of their rich democratic heritage. For another, elections there generally produce stable parliamentary majorities and governments that, although not without their scandals, fulfil their mandates. So compared to Bulgarians, the Greeks are much better protected from the phenomenon of electoral fatigue and the sense of having a futile electoral process that is not conducive to producing sustainable governments.”