The SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance slammed New Democracy's poor result at the local election on their "arrogance."
"The arrogance of the New Democracy party was defeated on Sunday's local elections. It was the first questioning of the regime that Mitsotakis' government was trying to establish, a questioning that led to the first crack that caused the change in many large municipalities and many regions," the president of SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance's parliamentary group, Sokratis Famellos, said in an interview with radio station "Sto Kokkino" of Thessaloniki.
"The fact that Mitsotakis lost five of the six districts he contested in yesterday's elections is an important political development, even if government officials tried to downplay its importance to hide the defeat. Of course, we are not celebrating, but we are drawing important political conclusions from the results of the second round of the local administration elections," he said.
Greece’s ruling New Democracy party suffered a setback in Sunday’s runoff elections for regional governors and mayors, losing the country’s two largest cities and five of the six regional contests.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had explicitly said that his goal was to win all 13 regions plus the cities of Athens, Thessaloniki and Piraeus, “13 plus 3,” as he said.
The results of the first round, last Sunday, appeared to consolidate New Democracy’s political dominance, already expressed in the double national election, last May and June.
Its endorsed candidates won all seven regions whose result was decided in the first round, as well as Piraeus. This included two cases, Piraeus and the region of Crete, where New Democracy decided to hitch itself on the bandwagon of the incumbents, whom it had opposed in the previous local elections in 2019.
But on Sunday, voters, at least those that bothered to turn out, inflicted a reality check on New Democracy’s triumphalism.
“It was not an especially good night for New Democracy,” Mitsotakis acknowledged Sunday night. But he went on to say that this had become apparent in the October 8 first round, a contrast to his optimistic, if not triumphalist, statements back then.
The result that probably stung the most was in the capital Athens, where a socialist-backed academic and political neophyte, Haris Doukas, beat incumbent Kostas Bakoyannis, with nearly 56% of the vote.
That was a massive upset, considering that Bakoyannis had scored over 41% in the first round, a little short of the 43% threshold required for an outright victory, to Doukas’ 14%.
Bakoyannis is Mitsotakis' nephew; his mother, Dora Bakoyannis, a New Democracy lawmaker and former minister, was mayor of Athens from 2003 to 2007.
Sunday's turnout in Athens was even lower than in the first round: just 26.7% of eligible voters showed up, compared to last Sunday’s 32.3%.
Turnout around the country was 40.7% for the 84 municipal contests and 35.1 % for the six regionals. In the first round of Oct. 8, turnout in both types of contests had been 52.5%.
Another significant result was the region of Thessaly, where New Democracy-backed incumbent governor, Kostas Agorastos, lost 40% to 60%, to Dimitris Kouretas, backed by both the socialist PASOK and left-wing Syriza parties.
Before disastrous floods hit the region in September, Agorastos was considered a shoo-in for a fourth consecutive term.
Sunday’s result was a disavowal of his, and the central government’s mismanagent of the emergency. Premier Mitsotakis had campaigned for Agorastos in the final days before the runoff.
In the city of Thessaloniki, socialist Stelios Angeloudis, who was not his party’s official candidate, because of fighting among local party officials, easily defeated incumbent Konstantinos Zervas, 67% to 33%.
Besides Thessaly, New Democracy lost four other regional contests to conservative dissidents, only one of whom was the incumbent. The ruling party’s sole victory Sunday came in the Peloponnese.
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