Greece votes in general election with chaotic outcome in offing

Greece went to the parliamentary polls on Sunday (May 21) with 9.8 million registered voters looking to cast their votes to elect the next government. This is the first election since the country was freed from the supervision of international lenders who had provided bailout funds over the last few years.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 55, a Harvard-educated former banker, and 48-year-old Alexis Tsipras, who heads the left-wing Syriza party and served as prime minister during some of the financial crisis’ most turbulent years, are the two main contenders in the fray.

Mitsotakis' ruling New Democracy party currently holds the aces with 159 seats in the 300-seat Hellenic Parliament. During the canvassing trail, Mitsotakis promised to build on his earlier work, having taken the country out of financial duress. Taking a leaf out of US President Joe Biden's book, Mitsotakis used the "Let’s finish what we started" slogan to attract the voters.

He patted his own back by remarking that tax cuts delivered during his first term led to a three per cent annual growth and cut unemployment to less than eight per cent.

The cost of living crisis has been one of the major poll planks with parties attempting to woo voters by offering to increase the minimum wage and create more jobs.Tsipras', particularly,has used the crisis to get the voters gravitated towards his party.

A winner is highly unlikely

The election, though, is highly unlikely to produce an outright winner as the political parties fail to agree to a coalition. A winner, however,is necessary, not because the country cannot afford to slip up on the economic scale anymore but also because the dispute with Turkey over maritime borders in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean is becoming increasingly fraught.

Picture regarding the results will be cleared late in the night after a joint exit poll by six polling agencies is published.

Meanwhile, opinion polls have predicted that Mitsotakis' party may sweep 35 per cent of votes, some six percentage points ahead of Tsipras’s Syriza party. Experts say 45 per cent of votes is required to clinch an outright majority.

If no majority is reached, a second election will take place on July 2 and under the new electoral law, the winner will be given a boost of up to 50 of Parliament's 300 seats.

(With inputs from agencies)

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