<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">A day after national elections, Greece on Monday was bracing for a new ballot which vote-winner Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' party is poised to seek in order to govern alone.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The conservative New Democracy party of Mitsotakis scored a thumping win in Sunday's vote, with a clear 20-point lead over its nearest rival -- Syriza led by leftist Alexis Tsipras.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Voters handed the conservatives their best result in 14 years, crediting the party with bringing economic stability back to a nation once known as an EU laggard.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mitsotakis himself said the "great victory surpassed our own expectations".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it fell short of an outright majority, leaving Mitsotakis with the option of either seeking a coalition or calling a new vote.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The 55-year-old Harvard graduate on Sunday made clear his preferred option.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Together we will fight as of tomorrow, so that in the next elections, what citizens have already decided -- a self-reliant New Democracy -- will be mathematically confirmed at the ballot."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We will move forward, boldly and steadily, to complete today's important first step, and be the final winners," he said, adding that Greeks "want a strong government".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tsipras also set the stage for a new vote, saying "the electoral cycle is not over yet".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next battle, he said, will be "critical and final".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Economic stability -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In power over the last four years, former McKinsey consultant Mitsotakis, 55, had steered the country through the pandemic which devastated Greece's vital tourism industry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On his watch, the erstwhile EU economic headache has enjoyed a post-Covid revival, booking growth of 5.9 percent in 2022.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With unemployment and inflation falling, and growth this year projected at twice that of the European Union average, Greece's outlook was a far cry from the throes of the crippling debt crisis a decade ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mitsotakis' term had been blighted by a wiretapping scandal as well as a train crash that claimed 57 lives in February.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The government initially blamed the accident -- Greece's worst-ever rail disaster -- on human error, even though the country's notoriously poor rail network has suffered from years of under-investment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nevertheless, neither the accident nor the wiretapping scandal appeared to have dented support for his conservatives -- which scored a far bigger win than that predicted by opinion polls ahead of the vote.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the massive protests that broke out in the aftermath of the rail crash, the transport minister at the time, Kostas Karamanlis, was reelected on Sunday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Turn the tide -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Under a new electoral law that comes into play in the next election, the winner can obtain a bonus of up to 50 seats. Based on Sunday's showing and that calculation, New Democracy is virtually assured of a victory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the left will likely seek to turn the tide by campaigning on cost-of-living problems which occupy many voters' minds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Both Tsipras and socialist party Pasok-Kinal, led by 44-year-old Nikos Androulakis, face an uphill task however.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pasok was credited with just 11.5 percent of the vote.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another casualty Sunday was Tsipras' former maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose anti-austerity MeRA25 party failed to garner enough support to make it to parliament. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>