No plans for the future
Many people claim that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had no choice but to support tooth and nail the 13 regional governors and three mayors that he had put forward in last week’s regional and municipal elections. “What could he have said?” they ask. “Vote for the eight and it doesn’t matter about the rest?” The answer is “Yes.” This is exactly what he did with the candidates of the remaining 329 small and large municipalities: He let local government win. He did the same in Thessaloniki and Western Macedonia, where the first round of voting indicated that his candidates would lose.
At the end of the day, he seemed to get along well with Dimitris Kouretas, the newly elected regional governor of Thessaly, who ousted the New Democracy-backed incumbent Kostas Agorastos. How much better would the cooperation have been with Agorastos if he were re-elected?
Mitsotakis’ expressed goal to win all the regions was maximalist and dangerous. Even one lost race would taint his profile just four months after he won a landslide victory in the general elections. Of course we are not saying that he should not have supported any of his candidate. But the support could have taken the form of a recommendation, that “New Democracy believes that so-and-so and so-and-so are the best choices for the X district and Y municipality.”
He shouldn’t have gone all out in his aim to turn Greece’s map blue – the color of New Democracy – and the party’s officials should have spilled less bile during the campaign period. How will those officials cooperate, for example, with the new governor of Western Macedonia, Giorgos Amanatidis, whom the government spokesperson described as a “political adventurer”?
Mitsotakis’ expressed goal to win all the regions was maximalist and dangerous. Even one lost race would taint his profile just four months after he won a landslide victory in the general elections
Of course, a lot is said in politics before politicians end up on a first-name basis, such as the outpourings of familiarity between late New Democracy leader Konstantinos Mitsotakis and late PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou in 1990, just a year after the latter was referred to a Special Court for corruption.
Everything can be forgotten. Besides, everyone and almost everything depends on the central government anyway. New Democracy’s defeat in five regions and Greece’s two main municipalities will also be forgotten.
The only worrying thing highlighted by New Democracy’s defeat is the government’s lack of planning for the next day. We have written about it before, when SYRIZA was calling the government “a regime” and Mitsotakis “Orban.”
The conservative government has enacted several illiberal laws that offend democratic institutions; the case of the wiretapping scandal is the most egregious and dangerous example. Not because the ruling party wants to install an illiberal democracy, but because it wants to hide its wrongdoing.
Just as in the case of wanting to create a “blue map,” it acts with short-sightedness. It does not think of the next day, that the map may change or that these laws and practices will survive the current government. Is excessive optimism or excessive arrogance to blame? Maybe they boil down to the same thing.
