Main opposition New Democracy (ND) leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis closed his center-right party’s 12th nationwide conference on Sunday in a similar manner in which he opened it on Friday: pledging lower taxes and boosting private sector employment.
Earlier during the weekend, he told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that triple elections – general, local government and European Parliament – may be the eventual choice that his rival, PM Alexis Tsipras, will select.
During the same unofficial briefing, moreover, he flatly dismissed Tsipras’ “challenge” to hold a television debate, saying he’s available anytime in Parliament for a debate on the floor and from the podium and will, of course, hold a debate when a general election is called.
Tsipras and his hard left SYRIZA party are trailing Mitsotakis and ND, respectively, in all mainstream opinion polls over the past year and a half, with the pressure building on the former to overturn the situation and mount a comeback, given that a general election cannot be held after October 2019.
Back on Sunday, meanwhile, the pro-reform and pro-market Mitsotakis said his party, if elected to government, will reverse the expansion of the state witnessed since 2015.
“They want a poor country, in order to dole out welfare benefits and promises,” he said of the leftist-rightist coalition government. “Our goal is lower taxes, an boon in investments and new jobs.”
