April 9 is the most likely election date
PM to finalize decision over end-of-year holidays; second poll to take place in mid- to late May
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to decide the final date for the first of what is almost certain to be a double election over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, with April 9 increasingly looming as the most likely date.
Mitsotakis and his closest aides believe that choosing April 9 presents a number of advantages: It cannot be considered an early election, even though the ruling conservative New Democracy’s four-year term does not expire until July 7, yet it is early enough not to allow what is expected to be a polarized, even poisonous political clash to drag into the summer.
Also, April 9 avoids an election coinciding with the university entrance exams in June, since a second election, if necessary, will then take place in May.
The date, before Easter, will allow the hundreds of thousands of big-city residents, mostly in Athens and Thessaloniki, who nonetheless vote in their constituencies of origin, to combine voting with their Easter vacations. Ruling party officials consider that a higher turnout would favor them.
By early April, the public will also begin to feel the impact on the number of measures on their pocket: The so-called “solidarity contribution,” an extra tax that benefited the indigent and was borne mostly by the middle class, will be abolished on January 1. The so-called Market Pass subidizing households’ grocery purchases for a six-month period will be rolled out at the end of February. Just before the election, the government will announce the new, higher minimum wage that will take effect on May 1.
Because of the constitutional provisions regarding the country’s electoral law, a double election is almost inevitable. The first poll will take place under almost pure proportional representation, according to a law voted by the previous leftist-led government. An overall majority by one party in Parliament is extremely unlikely, as is the emergence of a coalition government out of it. There will be a dissolution and elections in just over a month after the first ones, under an electoral law passed by the current government and which grants a 30-seat premium to the poll winner. A caretaker government will take over in the meantime.
Mitsotakis has said that parliamentary activity will not slow down in the runup to the polls and legislation on the environment, security, migration and tourism will be enacted.
