Μake us preferred on Google It was September 1993 when Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis said that “Antonis Samaras tonight took a step toward the great betrayal of 47 percent of the Greek people.” By then, Samaras was no longer part of the government. He had been dismissed as foreign minister the previous year over their dispute on Greece’s response to the naming of its northern neighbor, had resigned his own parliamentary seat, and was leading his own party, Political Spring, whose declaration that it could no longer tolerate the government prompted Mitsotakis’s outburst.
Mitsotakis’s government collapsed within days, brought down by a wave of defections that cost him his parliamentary majority and forced early elections that October, an election New Democracy lost. Political Spring’s own moment in the sun did not last long either. Samaras spent years outside mainstream politics before returning to New Democracy, becoming its leader in 2009 and prime minister of the country in 2012.
But that is history. In the present another fresh front has opened over the last couple of years between the son of Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and Antonis Samaras. The current New Democracy leader expelled the former prime minister from the party in 2024, after Samaras criticized the government’s foreign policy in an interview with the print edition of To Vima.
Since then, Samaras’s attacks on the government have been increasing. At first, the prime minister’s office avoided engaging with the former PM and his ever expanding criticism. In recent months, though, this appears to have changed. The disagreements have now descended into open warfare, which was on full display at the Thessaloniki International Fair, where Kyriakos Mitsotakis unveiled his economic vision for the coming years.
Mitsotakis’s shot
Speaking from Thessaloniki, the prime minister ruled out any prospect of cooperation between New Democracy and the new political party rumored to be in the works by Samaras. Mitsotakis this time went further. Perhaps for the first time, he aimed a direct shot at the former premier. “He served the country as prime minister, the party welcomed him back, honored him,” Mitsotakis quipped on the sidelines of his news conference at TIF. “I want to believe he will consider more what his legacy will be. He possesses plenty of know how in how to hurt this party. I hope this time he won’t use it,” he concluded in a stern tone.
Samaras’s response
Antonis Samaras did not take long to respond. While Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s press conference was still underway, political reporters received word from the former PM’s office: his already recorded response, disseminated via video. “Who has the know how to hurt the party is not something the Mitsotakis family gets to decide, but rather the party’s own members,” he said.
Samaras continued by suggesting that the PM should worry about his own legacy first and foremost. “He will go down in history as the prime minister of high prices, taxes, corruption, arrogance, no bid contracts, the impoverishment of our countryside, the woke agenda, the hounding of the middle class, the destitution of farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen, the destruction of the hospitality industry, a foreign policy of appeasement, of the tens of thousands of undocumented migrants granted asylum, and of course of OPEKEPE,” referring to the farm subsidy fraud scandal, “and of the butcher of Tempi and the wiretapping scandal.”
He ended his response with a slogan he has been building on for some time now. “This is not the party, Mr. Mitsotakis. This is the Mitsotakis party.” Samaras’s framing, an appeal to disaffected New Democracy voters, tries to draw a distinction between the voter base of the governing party and its current leader.
Electoral lists
Antonis Samaras has already begun recruiting candidates for his new, still unannounced party, according to reports. To Vima’s Sunday, September 6 print edition reported that the first candidates being lined up come from New Democracy’s regional organizations, people who for various reasons have grown disillusioned with the current leadership or pulled back from active support for the party. The pitch targets voters whose quarrel is with “Mitsotakis’s party,” not with New Democracy itself.
Lists are already being drawn up around the country. Former New Democracy lawmakers are expected to run against the party, among them Marios Salmas, who has been in open conflict with the center right party since his dismissal from its parliamentary group. Messinia MP Miltos Chrysomallis, who represents the same electoral prefecture as Samaras, is keeping his plans close, though many expect him to follow the former prime minister.
The debate over New Democracy’s “woke agenda”
Samaras may not have announced a party yet, but the prime minister’s office is clearly troubled by the latest attacks coming from the Samaras camp. In recent days it has been on the defensive over the former PM’s criticism of an EOPYY platform, Greece’s national health insurance organization, that listed gender options including “male,” “female,” “other” and “undetermined.” Samaras pointed to it as proof of what he called the government’s “woke agenda,” and spoke of an ideological mutation inside New Democracy.
The health minister, Adonis Georgiadis, ordered that the “undetermined” gender option be removed from the platform, calling it a technical error. A few days later, the Samaras camp succeeded in putting New Democracy on the defensive once again, over how an elementary school textbook portrays a family. Several high ranking New Democracy officials jumped on the bandwagon with renewed zeal, eager to prove their anti woke credentials, a preview of the electoral battles ahead. When the Prime Minister was asked in Thessaloniki, he said there is no “woke agenda” in Greece. He also sidestepped a question on whether he regretted the marriage equality law his own government had passed in 2024.
Source: TO BHMA
