Mitsotakis kicks off tours with eyes on a difficult winter and reins in dissenting voices in Nea Demokratia

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has started a new round of regional tours with a view to the “difficult winter” awaiting the government, as ProtoThema reports. After returning from abroad, he called the first coordination meetings at Maximos on Monday and went back out into the field: today he visits Aspropyrgos, in West Attica, while on Friday he is expected in Pieria.

According to ProtoThema, the two visits share a common denominator: they are working-class areas and districts with problems, ahead of a difficult winter for the cost of living and energy. In Pieria, Nea Demokratia is under attack from the right, while in many areas of West Attica drifts toward the ruling party’s right are being recorded, as cost-of-living problems grow.

In parallel, as ProtoThema reports, Mitsotakis is expected to signal the announcements to be made on Wednesday on fuel support measures — initially for two weeks, before the framework is updated in mid-October with the forecast for heating oil. His message to associates, according to the paper: the weight is now placed on income support and the Thessaloniki measures, “in no way” breaking fiscal balance, with reserves standing and gradual announcements.

Another objective of the prime minister’s activism, according to ProtoThema, is to clearly contain the government narrative that was “clouded” in recent days by the “own goals” of blue cadres — culminating in Deputy Foreign Minister Haris Theoharis’s statement about “housewives” and “the miserable”. The issue was discussed at Maximos’s “morning coffee”; Theoharis withdrew the statement, speaking of “wrong wording”, while government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis called the expression inappropriate.

According to ProtoThema, the episode showed once more that Maximos remains vulnerable to crises that at first seem small but, left untreated in time, turn into major issues touching the core of Nea Demokratia’s relationship with its traditional audiences — at a time when, as the paper notes, Samaras’s party-in-formation “lurks”, aiming to express the authentic DNA of the camp.