Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing party is leading Sunday’s parliamentary election in Greece, according to exit polls, but the result, if confirmed, could portend difficulties in forming a stable government, AFP reported.

Kyriakos MitsotakisPhoto: Angelos Tzortzinis / DPA / Profimedia

The New Democracy party, which has been in power for four years, is gaining 36-40% of the vote.

The left-wing Syriza party of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras would receive between 25% and 29% of the vote. Syriza ruled the country from 2015 to 2019, at the height of the financial crisis.

The Pasok Socialist Party is credited with 9.5-12.5%, News.ro reports with reference to AFP.

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The election campaign, which was considered monotonous, ended on Friday evening at the foot of the Acropolis, where 55-year-old Kyriakos Mitsotakis asked voters for a new four-year mandate to continue building a “new Greece”.

Meanwhile, his rival Alexis Tsipras predicted the end of the “nightmare” on Sunday and accused the government of pursuing economic policies that “have the middle class living on food stamps.”

Tsipras wants to return to the country’s leadership after a first mandate from 2015 to 2019, which was marked by a clash with the European Union and then capitulation during negotiations to rescue Greece from the financial crisis.

For months, polls have given the conservative New Democracy (ND) leader a comfortable lead of between 5 and 7 percentage points.

According to a poll conducted by the Arco company on Thursday, ND was assigned 32.7% of voters and Syriza – 26%. And the third place is the socialist party “Pasok-Kinal”, which won 8.3% of the votes.

However, such a result will not allow the right to rule alone, and Kyriakos Mitsotakis ruled out the possibility of forming a coalition in a country where the political culture is not based on compromises.

In the event of the impossibility of forming a government majority, which is predicted by many analysts, new elections will be called at the end of June or the beginning of July.

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