By Ahmet Gencturk
ATHENS (AA) – As Greece gears up for fresh elections on June 25, it is all but certain that the center-right New Democracy (ND) party will repeat last month’s victory and its leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis will become the prime minister again.
ND ended the May 28 vote with 40.79% of the vote and 146 seats, just five short of an overall majority in the 300-member parliament.
Mitsotakis was handed the mandate to form a government, which he promptly returned, seeking fresh polls to achieve his objective of a single-party government.
The main opposition Syriza was the biggest loser last month, seeing its vote share plummet to 20.07%.
For Sunday’s vote, the main challenge confronting the party and its leader Alexis Tsipras, another former prime minister, is to retain its position as the main opposition, a spot being eyed by the socialist PASOK party led by Nikos Androulakis.
As the three parties jostle for power, here is a look at their three leaders who are front and center in the race for relevance in Greek politics:
- Kyriakos Mitsotakis: New face of the old Greek elite
Born on March 4, 1968 in Athens, he is the fourth and last child of Konstantinos Mitsotakis, a senior politician who served as prime minister from 1990 to 1993.
Hailing from the island of Crete, the Mitsotakis family is recognized as one of the oldest and most influential political families in the country, with links to Eleftherios Venizelos, regarded by many Greeks as “the second founder of modern Greece.”
Mitsotakis was an infant when his family, placed under house arrest by the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, escaped to Türkiye in 1968, aided by then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil.
The family eventually moved to Paris, where they lived until the fall of the junta.
After graduating from the private Athens College in 1986, Mitsotakis attended the prestigious Harvard University, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in social studies in 1990, followed by an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1995.
Until he decided to venture into politics in 2003, he worked in major international and national financial institutions in London and Athens.
He became a lawmaker for the first time in 2004, elected from Athens as a member of the ND.
From June 2013 to January 2015, he served as the minister of administrative reform and e-governance under ex-Prime Minister Andonis Samaras.
Mitsotakis replaced Samaras as the new leader of ND in January 2016, soon after the party lost power in the September 2015 snap elections.
As the opposition leader, Mitsotakis advocated for more neo-liberal economic policies, closer relations with the Western bloc, and strongly opposed the Prespa Agreement of 2018 between Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia which resolved the decades-old naming dispute between the two countries.
Mitsotakis became prime minister when ND swept back into power in the July 2019 polls with nearly 40% of the vote.
His term saw severe criticism over the worsening state of press freedom, corruption allegations, and a major scandal over the use of illegal spyware to monitor dozens of senior politicians, army officers, and journalists.
However, he was credited for his efforts to reform the Greek public administration and efficiently handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Alexis Tsipras: Face of the Greek left
Tsipras was born into a middle-class family on July 28, 1974 in Athens.
During his high school years, he joined the youth wing of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), a springboard for leftist Greek politicians for decades.
As a student leader and powerful orator, he started to attract public attention in the early 1990s.
After finishing high school, he enrolled in the renowned National Technical University of Athens, where his involvement in left-wing politics grew even deeper.
When the KKE broke off from Synaspimos, or The Coalition of the Left, he remained part of the bloc.
The coalition eventually transformed into Syriza, incorporating a number of small leftist parties and independent activists.
In 2008, he was elected president of Syriza and became a lawmaker the following year.
As public frustration with the establishment parties and politicians grew, so did Tsipras’ popularity.
He was a vocal opponent of the bailout deal negotiated with the EU, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which dictated heavy cuts in social spending.
Growing disillusionment among the Greek public fueled his political rise.
In the January 2015 elections, his party secured 36% of the vote and he became the youngest prime minister of Greece since 1865 by forming a coalition government with the far-right Independent Greeks party.
However, his failure to renegotiate the terms of the bailout deal led to defections from his party, forcing Tsipras to call a snap election in September 2015, which his party won.
During his tenure that lasted until the summer of 2019, Tsipras was compelled to enforce harsh economic measures because of the bailout deal, contrary to what he had promised.
That triggered a slide in Syriza’s popularity and it eventually lost out to ND in the July 2019 elections.
Syriza’s poor performance in last month’s elections came as a surprise to many people, including Tsipras, whose political future now seems to hinge on Sunday’s polls.
- Nikos Androulakis: Fresh face of the old socialist force
Born on Feb. 7, 1979, Androulakis is originally from Crete, like Mitsotakis, and studied civil engineering, like Tsipras.
In 2001, Androulakis became a member of the central committee of PASOK’s youth wing.
He was appointed as a member of the socialist party’s national council seven years later.
In 2013, at a time when the party’s standing in Greek politics was rapidly deteriorating, he was elected as a member of PASOK’s central committee, and then got the position of political secretary.
A year later, Androulakis became a member of the European Parliament.
Following the death of Foti Gennimata, he beat former Prime Minister George Papandreou in the race to become the new head of PASOK in 2021.
Under Androulakis, PASOK’s performance in the May 28 elections exceeded all expectations – finishing third with 11.46% of the vote – and he was elected to parliament for the first time in his political career.