Greece liked to underestimate Kyriakos Mitsotakis: but the tables have turned
11/09/2019
The impression that Greece held of Kyriakos Mitsotakis for a long time was mercilessly crushed after his sweeping victory in the general elections held on Sunday for the position of the country’s leader of the center-right New Democracy party. The people of Greece mocked the capabilities of Mitsotakis to such an extent that he was often addressed as “Koulis"; a toppled version of his first name that is capitalized upon to address children and their immature behavior. But, after the results were declared, it seems that the patience and perseverance of the present leader have borne fruits in his favor and the country's present financial hardship and a whole decade of subjugation under the radical shifts in its political scenario have simply catalyzed the results.
The most intriguing part about the election lies in the fact that a representative from the mainstream political party emerged victorious even when most of the European center-right parties are trying to leave a bare mark when it comes to winning the elections and forming a majority at the Parliament without assistance from their partners. However, this win of Kyriakos Mitsotakis is far from drawing the end-line for the minister; to stay in power and revive it over time he will have to prove to a lot of people that he is capable of pulling out the nation from the dark exhaustive dungeon of crisis and show it the light of the day.
- What led to this surprise?
After swearing-in on Monday, Mitsotakis (prime minister of Greece) announced his cabinet that interestingly portrayed the equal amalgamation of liberals and his party’s hard-right wing. Nikos Dendias, a liberal moderate was held as the Foreign minister and Nikos Panagiotopoulos as the Defense Minister. His cabinet is surprisingly large and includes a total of 49 ministers and deputies, out which, there are only five women.
Nevertheless, winning the trust of citizens who are of the opinion that Mitsotakis is incapable of rightfully dealing with the tangles in which Greece’s economic and social conditions are invariably trapped are unusually high and thereby take some time. According to his statements, his family name has played a huge role in handing over the first win as a member of the country’s parliament, but to him that has always been a burden; nonetheless today, from where he stands, he claimed that people did not vote for him because he hailed from a staunch political family but, despite that. Keeping all assertions aside, the majority of Greek liberals believe that chances of Mitsotakis becoming the prime minister would have been less or rather negligible, hadn’t he been the son of the former minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis.
Out of the entire crowd, the harsh comments of his primary opponent, the departing Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras has remained with him and he exclaimed in a true neo-communist style that after going through his comments, all he is compelled to do is shun them away with laughter as it originates from a person who did not responsibly work a single day in his life and took about 10 years to complete his graduation.
- The inception of this underestimation
Coming to the evolution of this underestimation, the roots of internal opposition can be traced back to three and a half years ago when he was to become the New Democracy's leader. He was considered distinct from the rest because he was an ardent supporter of the private enterprise and cast his vote in the favor of L.G.B.T rights and wanted to create a less stringent approach on migration. Taking into consideration these opposing views, Mitsotakis had to win over the trust of his party's Conservatives, Traditionalists, and right-wingers whose views were not as liberal as his. Coming to his past, he had to go through extensive mechanisms to rub off the accusations of corruption against him and his wife at the court which were eventually proved wrong, but this brought him to limelight and created the stage for endless controversies from his political opponents.
The one fact that Mitsotakis incessantly reinforced was that when people underestimated him, he turned that into a scope of advantage for himself; he didn’t mind that, all he knew was that he has been assigned with a job and he will fulfill that with the best of his capabilities.