ATHENS – A besieged Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who operates with a small circle of close, trusted advisors, will start taking advice from his ministers too as he eyes a 2023 re-election campaign.

The Premier, under fire for a spyware scandal on top of soaring inflation, Turkish provocations, an energy crisis that could put Greeks in the cold and dark this winter and the remnants of the COVID-19 pandemic usually confides in only a handful of people, said Kathimerini.

But with the pressure ratcheting up from the major opposition SYRIZA which was unseated in July, 2019 snap elections, and the rising PASOK Socialists – whose leader had his phone tapped by the National Intelligence Service (EYP) – the Premier is all ears for his Cabinet, the paper said.

The spying scandal showed a huge loophole in his style of governing as one of his first acts was putting EYP under his control and having the chief report directly to him – which didn’t happen in the Androulakis case, nor the bugging and use of spyware on the phone of financial reporter Thansis Koukakis.

Worse for Mitsotakis was that after he forced out former EYP chief Panagiotis Kontoleon for not telling him, the Premier then did the same to his General-Secretary, his nephew Grigoris Dimitriadis.

“But Mitsotakis is far from doing away with the so-called “executive model” of government. He is said to have told close aides that the executive model is non-negotiable and the only way to govern effectively,” the paper said, despite the flaws and failures.

He is said to believe in a closed circle after he said it worked well to deal with the pandemic and other crises that popped up after he was elected and tried to accelerate an economic recovery.

Mitsotakis has also made moves recently to consult with his ministers more often, even for issues outside their jurisdiction, the report said, adding that Cabinet talk will bring in policy matters for discussion.