Mitsotakis aims again for single-party government after spring election
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated, in an interview published Sunday, that the next national election will take place in the spring.
Pressed by interviewer Dimtris Danikas, a veteran journalist with Sunday newspaper “Proto Thema,” who asks whether the election will take place on April 2 or 9, Mitsotakis responded that “it could be in May.”
Mitsotakis’ four-year term expires in July and the timing will be influenced by the almost universal expectation that two elections will be held in quick succession because no party will win a majority in the 300-member Parliament.
The next two elections will be conducted under different electoral systems – a proportional representation system voted by the previous leftist government and one giving a bonus of 30 seats in the 300-member Parliament to the winner.
In the widely envisioned scenario, the Parliament elected after the first elections will, after electing its officials, fail to approve any government combination and no coalition will be formed. The top three parties will successively get the chance to form a government. After the inconclusive votes, Parliament will be dissolved and a new election called; a caretaker government will take over for the month between the two elections. Last time this happened was in 2012; with no party winning a majority of MPs after the second elections, in June 2012, a three-party coalition was formed.
Mitsotakis calls for a single-party government and says a grand coalition with the main opposition SYRIZA is impossible, as is one with a party on ruling conservative New Democracy’s right, the nationalist and populist Greek Solution. He does not exclude outright a coalition with socialist PASOK, credited in all opinion polls with third place in the next elections, but hints that his idea of a “coalition” is including ministers of different political persuasions in his government.
