Opposition bracing for defeat, says PM

The main opposition party is bracing for a defeat in the May 21 polls and PASOK has gone back to the “bad unionist” days of the 1980s, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday, insisting that an outright victory for the ruling conservatives is the only way forward for the country.

“All of SYRIZA’s rhetoric seems to me as if it is getting ready for a defeat,” the New Democracy leader said in an interview with Skai radio, accusing his leftist adversary, Alexis Tsipras, of making his campaign personal. 

“Eighty percent of his rhetoric consists of attacking me and my father,” Mitsotakis said. “They [even] said that if we could tamper with the vote, we would.”

The conservative leader reiterated comments that appear to rule out the possibility of a coalition with PASOK, which came third in the last election, in the event that ND does not win with an outright majority in the first round. 

“I don’t see any room for consensus with the PASOK of Mr [Nikos] Androulakis, who has said that he doesn’t want the leader of the party that comes first as prime minister. All the polls show that the first party will have a triple percentage lead over the third… The PASOK of Mr Androulakis reminds me of the bad unionist PASOK of the 1980s, which we want to put behind us. I see no field of convergence,” he said.

Mitsotakis insisted that a New Democracy government with an outright majority is the “only proposal for stable governance,” noting that the conservative party has “opened doors and windows and become grafted with officials from other political parties.”