Government must deliver on three fronts
Having achieved what was thought until last May as unthinkable – winning a second four-year term with more than double the score of his closest rival – Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ overarching goal is to solidify his support well beyond the conservative electorate and maintain the preference of centrist voters.
Seeking to represent voters that range from the mainstream right to the center-left, Mitsotakis must implement policies that satisfy all of them. To the conservatives, he must appear tough on security issues; to the liberals, he must become the catalyst for an overdue modernization of the state; and to those of the left, he must take climate change seriously and embrace some of their causes.
In his policy statement on Thursday, Mitsotakis had something for all: To the conservatives, he presented himself as a “responsible patriot,” implementing a massive armaments program, continuing his tough policy on migration and promising to expand a fence on the land border with Turkey. To the liberals, he presented a market-friendly side, but with policies designed to help the vulnerable, even continuing subsidies to mitigate the effects on inflation, giving the lie to those in the opposition who had proclaimed that the subsidies were a cynical pre-election ploy that would be abandoned once re-election was achieved. And to the progressives, he offered legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, spoke of combating climate change and seeking green energy alternatives and dealing with the challenges of artificial intelligence.
The three major fronts on which the government must deliver are the economy, Greek-Turkish relations and the modernization of the state, especially the parts that affect citizens’ everyday lives, such as health and justice. He entrusted the difficult task of reforms in health and justice to two veterans, Michalis Chrysochoidis and Giorgos Floridis, who had acquired a reputation as modernizers in their former party, socialist PASOK. And Mitsotakis did this fully aware that their appointments would grate among some longtime New Democracy voters.
