By Penelope Galliou

The pieces of the “electoral puzzle” that were left empty for the ND, after the result of the Eurocalp, the Megaro Maximos is looking for, which, as the Prime Minister himself announced in his statement, marks the beginning of changes, as an imprint of the understanding of the electoral message that received by the ruling faction. “From now on, these elections become the starting point of a new path to 2027. That’s why from tomorrow we turn with greater intensity to the problems, for more work and fewer weaknesses, for greater effort and for smaller failures,” said the prime minister. A commitment, which is estimated to depict a change in strategy for the ruling party and the government while not excluding corrective moves in the government structure, even though the prime minister himself did not open any such conversation but was a topic of discussion in the blue political “wells”.

In no case, however, are the debates and implications of the election result expected to launch more general political developments and recourse to early elections, as happened in France. “We have three years ahead of us without elections. Just as the Greece of 2024 is, I believe, much better than that of 2019, so the Greece of 2027 will be much better than today. We want it, we can do it and we will achieve it” expressed Kyriakos Mitsotakis, closing – before they even open – any scenario of an early appeal to the national polls, referring to the end of the four-year rule of the ND, in 2027.

This morning – as Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated shortly before leaving the headquarters of Piraeus last night – the government officials will return to the “fortifications”. “Tomorrow at 8.30 we will be in our offices” he said characteristically, putting forward the much work that the government has in front of it with even more speed. “Surely there were many voters who wanted to protest about issues concerning their daily life, most importantly, most importantly, the accuracy” assessed the prime minister, respecting this choice and receiving the message they sent. “I hear their voice and their command and I hear it loud: ‘We trust you but try harder.’ And this is what we will do, so that we can move faster and steadily closer to Europe,” he stressed.

According to government sources, in Piraeus and Herodos Attikou no one estimated that the percentage of the European elections would be written in front of “2”, as – apart from the polls – from its own measurements by the Maximos Palace, the range of the lower limit was higher and started at 31%, with no thoughts of falling below the 30% barrier. The first clouds, however, began to gather yesterday afternoon, and from the figures concerning the turnout of voters at the polls, which indicated that something was not “read” correctly throughout the period leading up to the poll. However, the same sources noted that when the electoral threshold was set at 33%, there was an assessment that the ND could approach this goal.

“I will not hide the truth: our party did not reach the goal we had set. Nor am I interested in arguments such as that the difference from the second party is the biggest in the history of the European elections” admitted the prime minister, noting that “we knew from the beginning that this election would be very difficult. Citizens who supported us in 2023 knew that now no government is being elected and perhaps they faced this battle differently. Before the election, also, and despite my own efforts, there was a lack of essential reflection on the future of Europe and on the position of our country in it.”

For the government side, however, as for all the parties, a major issue is the deafening historic rate of abstention, which reached close to 60% and broke the abstention record of 2019, which reached 47.5%. The Government representative, Pavlos Marinakis, speaking to SKAI, spoke of a “Pyrrhic victory” of the ND, pointing out that the messages were received and the “key word” is efficiency. He emphasized, emphatically, that the “scale” of the election result must also include the laxity with which the Greek voters faced the European elections. “We have to put into the analysis the dimension of a more relaxed ballot box that does not choose a government,” he observed, estimating that if governability was judged, the result would be different and the participation of citizens would be greater.