Mitsotakis said that in planning the next stage of the staff state there will be “many new faces and more women in the new government”.
"For seven years now, since I became President of the New Democracy, when the citizens honoured me with this very great responsibility, I have been trying to expand the party. And many times I have emphasised that it is our duty to expand into what we call the middle ground and that the purpose is to expand the electoral boundaries of New Democracy,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis told ERT.
"We are making a big effort to renew our ballots even more now,” he continued.
“It is very encouraging that there is a great interest of young people to join the New Democracy ballots. We are doing a serious job of making the ballots representative and a very strict evaluation of the candidates, in order to avoid mistakes of the past.”
Speaking about the best moment of the government term, he referred to gov.gr and 112, while when asked about the biggest mistake, he said that the most difficult moment for him was the fires of the summer of 2021 and the issue of wiretapping.
"From the first moment … I took on the responsibilities assigned to me. And most importantly, we made changes. We made changes in the legislative framework and we made very important changes in the way the National Intelligence Service operates," he said.
"There will definitely be more women."
When asked about the next government if he was elected as prime minister again, he said: "We will certainly improve, without changing, the way the government operates. What we call the staff state I believe accomplished its mission, in the sense that it coordinated the Ministers, set targets, set accountability rules and coordinated a series of policies that required cooperation between the Ministries."
He also said that "obviously there will be significant changes in the faces, one would expect that. And there will definitely be more women."
The promise comes in the lead up to the elections, the exact timing of which is yet to be announced.
Mitsotakis, who has been serving as the prime minister of Greece since 8 July 2019, said with regard to when the election might occur, that “plus or minus a few weeks will not make a big difference when they finally take place” and that the important thing is that the government exhausts the four years as he promised when he came to office.
In addition, he reiterated that he would not wish for a long, toxic pre-election period and that the Constitution specifies the procedure by which the Parliament is prematurely dissolved, even if this dissolution comes one or two or three months before the official end of the government tenure.
"As I have said many times, we will have an election sometime in the spring, so we are in a quasi-election period. Besides, I think you realise it too, from the decibels of tension, at least from the official opposition," said Mitsotakis, accusing main opposition party SYRIZA of attacking the government for three and a half years without producing an alternative proposal.
"What happened in the past is happening now, just with increased intensity. This is how we will go to the elections. I have no doubt about it. I have no intention of following this pattern of confrontation. I want to speak positively about the future of the place. This is primarily of interest to citizens.
“Let me explain that we went through many trials. We endured, we stood. We have achieved quite a lot, together with society, we can achieve much more. And these elections, Mr. Kouvaras, will be an opportunity to compare our own proposal for the future of the country with other proposals that, to tell you honestly, apart from an incredible auction of benefits, I have not seen any organised alternative plan for the future.”
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