Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Greece elects pro-business steamroller premier

minus
plus

Katerina NIKOLOPOULOU, John HADOULIS -


Greece’s incoming prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a hard-nosed reformer from a conservative political dynasty with controversial civil service job cuts on his resume.


Three years after taking over the leadership of the conservative New Democracy party once headed by his father, the 51-year-old Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant has promised to “steamroll” obstacles to business.


“The people must entrust the helm of Greece to a strong hand,” he said on the campaign trail. And on election night after winning a landslide victory, he vowed that Greece would “proudly” enter a post-bailout period of “jobs, security and growth”.


“A painful cycle has closed,” Mitsotakis said in a televised address, adding that Greece would “proudly raise its head again” on his watch His critics argue that his pro-business platform and promised tax cuts can only credibly come at the expense of social benefits to crisis-hit families. In his sole ministerial stint in charge of administrative reform in 2014, he was tasked with eliminating 15,000 civil service posts under pressure from Greece’s creditors.


The downsizing was cut short by elections, but Mitsotakis’s tag as a hatchet man has endured.


During the campaign, Mitsotakis told AFP his first priority would be to “restart” the economy. He also wants to renegotiate Greece’s tight fiscal targets in talks with the country’s international creditors.


Mitsotakis has long struggled to shake off his elitist image. In a country with a long tradition of nepotism, Mitsotakis swears by meritocracy and has vowed not to put any relatives in his cabinet.


But few people in Greece have a pedigree as exclusive as his. He is the son of former prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis, one of the country’s longest-serving parliamentarians.


His sister is former minister Dora Bakoyannis, Athens’ first female mayor. And new Athens mayor Costas Bakoyannis, elected in May, is his nephew.


Since 2016, when he ran as a candidate for the leadership of New Democracy, Mitsotakis has consistently fought to distance himself from his status as a member of Greece’s leading political dynasty and he considers himself a “maverick”.


“Judge me by my CV, not by my name,” he insists.


. — AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon