The first round of the presidential elections in Greece will be held on January 25. But the ultimate winner is already certain. It is the candidate of New Democracy, Konstantinos Tassulas, who until a few days ago was the speaker of the Greek Parliament.
It will likely take four rounds of elections because the conservative right-wing candidate lacks the cross-party clout to win in the first or second round of voting in Parliament – he would then need a two-thirds majority, 200 out of 300 MPs. His predecessor, who is still at the helm of the country, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, effortlessly achieved this in 2020.
Tassulas will not be able to get even 180 votes, which has been required to be elected in at least the third round since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. Since the 2019 constitutional reform, a governing majority of 156 MPs is sufficient in the fourth round.
Tassulas will be the first president to be elected to a largely representative office without the consent of an opposition party. Only a section of the "Spartiates", the party that inherited the banned far-right "Golden Dawn", will likely vote for him, but he doesn't really like that.
Three opponents
The 15-year-old Tassulas is also the first candidate to have to win a multi-candidate race. Until now, Greece has always had a consensus when it comes to choosing a president. But on January XNUMX, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the candidacy of his party comrade and parliament speaker, which other parties saw as a purely partisan move. The social democratic PASOK responded by nominating its own politician, Tassos Giannitsis, a former foreign minister and advocate of the failed pension reform at the beginning of the century.
The left, united in the Syriza party – or what remained of it after three splits – nominated the former economy minister in the last PASOK government, Luka Kaceli. She became famous during the 2011 financial and debt crisis as a protector of small creditors from bank foreclosures.
Finally, "Niki", a new Orthodox, ultra-conservative party, has nominated its candidate. It is an unknown lawyer, Costas Kyriakou. The party's president, Dimitris Natsios, says that he is a "heroic prisoner of the Enver Hoxha regime in Albania."
It is clear to the opposition parties that their candidates cannot win a majority of the votes. The winner will be New Democracy candidate Konstantinos Tassulas.
A place of tradition
With his decision to nominate Tassulas, Prime Minister Mitsotakis broke with a 50-year political tradition. Until now, conservative governments have nominated a progressive candidate, and left-wing governments have nominated a conservative one.
Five years ago, Mitsotakis nominated the progressive president of the High Administrative Court, Katerina Sekelaropoulos, and she was elected in the first round of parliamentary voting, receiving 261 votes. She was the first woman to head the state. She could have been elected for a second term, because she was a restrained and generally accepted president. Why didn't Mitsotakis nominate her again? Or why didn't he look for a candidate on whom most parties would agree?
Shift to the right in New Democracy
Sakellaropoulou was not popular on the right wing of the ruling party, for example, because she publicly expressed satisfaction with the introduction of gay marriage in February 2024. For the extreme rightists in New Democracy, she was too close to "voukism", too liberal and open to new ways of life and minorities.
Prime Minister Mitsotakis did not want to anger his party comrades on the right wing and did not propose a president for another term. But he did not propose any other candidate from the left spectrum, but the conservative Tasoulas. Namely, Mitsotakis sees himself as a liberal reformist and believes that he is threatened by the right.
While the left-wing opposition is weak and divided, parties to the right of New Democracy are growing stronger. In the last European Parliament elections, right-wing populists and far-right parties received a combined 20 percent of the vote, with a growing tendency.
There is still no strong figure on the right-wing scene who would be attractive to a wider range of voters. But such a politician could emerge at any moment and win the sympathy of voters who lean towards the right.
Adapting to the new zeitgeist
In the new Trump era, the new right-wingers could gain support from America. Elon Musk has not yet called anyone a “savior of the nation,” but many far-rightists in Athens are dreaming of it. It seems that the prime minister’s entourage has come to the impression that the shift to the right is part of the new zeitgeist. Accordingly, the decision was made to nominate Konstantinos Thassoulas as the government’s candidate for president of Greece.
This politician is close to the nationalist wing of the party. He began his political career as secretary to New Democracy President Evangelos Averof from 1981 to 1984. Averof was extremely conservative and working with him also permeated Tassulas' views. Tassulas first became an MP 25 years ago. He served as Minister of Culture, Deputy Minister of Defense and finally, in 2019, Speaker of the Parliament.
The future president of Greece is educated and has a sense of humor. But his most important trait is loyalty to the party and its leader. Mitsotakis does not have to fear that Tassulas will do or say something independent of the party line.
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