Prime Minister Mitsotakis calls for elections, puts Greece in campaign mode

Greece is officially heading to elections on May 21st. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made the much anticipated announcement on Tuesday, officially kicking off the campaign season. Mitsotakis has called on Greeks to compare his administration with the previous Syriza government in terms of its handling of the economy, foreign policy, and Greece’s image abroad.

Opinion polls show his party, New Democracy, in the lead over the main opposition Syriza, but the gap has narrowed amid criticism of the government’s handling of a train crash that took the lives of 57 people. How this will impact the election remains to be seen.

John Psaropoulos, an independent journalist based in Athens and Al Jazeera’s southeast Europe correspondent, joins Thanos Davelis with the latest analysis.