Staying true to the political strategy he set out in his keynote speech at the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF), Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis used a press conference to present New Democracy (ND) as the party best placed to guarantee not merely deliverable pledges for the coming year, but a workable programme spanning a full four year term.

Acknowledging mistakes and omissions, including the scandal involving OPEKEPE, the agency responsible for disbursing European Union farm subsidies, and the controversy over university policing, Mitsotakis nonetheless turned his fire on former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis and PASOK itself, as well as former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, while flatly rejecting the accusation that citizens had been better off before 2019.

“I said that governments with an outright majority are better equipped to make quick decisions and are not held hostage to bargaining,” Mitsotakis said, adding that this was not said out of arrogance, and urging ND officials not to behave as though the governing party were the only alternative in the political system.

With that in mind, he put the onus on PASOK, which through “heavyweight” congress resolutions has ruled out cooperation with ND. “I have a duty to explain what could happen if the country is left without a government after the next general election,” Mitsotakis said.

Mitsotakis also revisited the scenario of a “government of the defeated,” a phrase he had also used in 2023, naming Tsipras, Androulakis, Athens Mayor Charis Doukas, former Parliament speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou and even Communist Party (KKE) leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas as potential members of such an arrangement.

“We lived through this in 2023, and we saw where it led. The first party forms the government. That is a given, and an achievement,” Mitsotakis said pointedly, responding to various scenarios circulating in political circles. At another point, he made clear that the country already has a prime minister and that he himself is ND’s leader, joking “are you asking me to resign?” in response to talk of a coalition government involving ND but without him at its head.

A wasted rebranding

Mitsotakis repeatedly took aim at Tsipras, saying his “rebranding effort had come to nothing.” “In 2014 there was a state of self delusion. Now there is deception, a genuine effort to mislead Greek citizens,” he said, before turning his fire on PASOK too, remarking that for the first time he saw “two parties competing over a programme of political deception.”

He went on to say that the former prime minister knows “full well that he will never be called upon to implement” his proposals. This was his answer to claims that he was sustaining a “convenient two party divide.”

Asked whether Tsipras’s return could ultimately serve ND electorally, the prime minister dismissed the idea that he gets to choose his opponent. “We do not choose our opponent. It is voters who decide, through their choice, who governs and who sits in opposition. I respect all my opponents,” he said.

PASOK’s political memorial

Mitsotakis turned against PASOK on several occasions, criticising the party both for positions he said the country’s finances “cannot accommodate” and which have been rejected by the Bank of Greece, and for what he described as the political nostalgia on display at the party’s event marking the 3 September anniversary of its founding, held in Heraklion, Crete.

“The country must reduce its debt. The greatest achievement of our policy, for the first time since the 1980s, is that debt is falling significantly. Back then, debt only moved in one direction. We remember the 1980s. I saw some fine celebrations in Crete, PASOK’s good years, flags, lorries, songs. In the 1980s, debt rose from 25 percent of GDP to 100 percent of GDP. Those who are essentially conducting politics as a memorial service to the past should reflect on that too,” Mitsotakis said pointedly.

Samaras’s expertise

Mitsotakis said relatively little, but in sharply pointed terms, about former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the prospect of him founding a new party.

“Given what Mr Samaras has said, directly questioning the core of our foreign and defence policy, I see absolutely no room for understanding. Mr Samaras served the country as prime minister; the party welcomed him back, honoured him, made him prime minister. I want to believe he will think harder about his legacy. He has more than enough expertise in how to damage the ND party. I hope he does not use it, and that he thinks about his legacy,” he said, sending a clear message to the former prime minister, who has nonetheless been stepping up his activity.

On this point, and in an apparent effort to head off criticism over the so called woke agenda, Mitsotakis made clear that “there is no woke agenda in Greece” and that it does not reflect his government’s approach, while leaving open the possibility of corrections wherever a genuine error exists, such as in the case of textbooks under the “multiple textbook” scheme.

He also once again backed Education Minister Sofia Zacharaki against criticism over the content of school textbooks, pointing out that “neither the ministry nor the minister writes the textbooks.” “I think we already have enough reasons to be divided. I do not think we need to bring in further causes of division,” he said.