Greece’s Tsipras Storms to Victory but Tough Reforms Ahead

Local Editor

Greece's left-wing prime minister-elect Alexis Tsipras won a thumping poll victory that hands him a mandate to drive through unpopular reforms agreed under an austerity deal struck with international creditors.

The unexpected margin of his victory Sunday came after a mutiny within the ranks of his radical Syriza party over a U-turn on tough tax hikes and pensions reforms felled his government and triggered Greece's third vote this year.

With around 90 percent of votes counted, Syriza looked set to secure close to an absolute majority in the country's 300-seat parliament, with a smaller nationalist party expected to join forces and push it over the top.

"Syriza proved too tough to die," Tsipras, at 41 the country's youngest premier in 150 years, told a victory rally in Athens attended by hundreds of cheering flag-waving supporters late Sunday.

"The Greek people gave a clear mandate to rid ourselves of what is holding us in the past."

Tsipras, who had justified the austerity deal as saving Greece from a chaotic exit from the eurozone, said the victory would "change the balance" in Europe, and pledged to fight endemic corruption and hidden wealth.

"We have difficulties ahead," he told supporters. "Recovery cannot come through magic but through lots of work, stubbornness and struggle."

Results showed that Syriza won 35.53 percent of the vote, with the vast majority of ballots tabulated, against 28.05 percent for their main rivals, the conservative New Democracy party.

That means Syriza will likely end up with 145 lawmakers, and once again join with the Independent Greeks party, who were their coalition partners in the first Syriza government formed in January.

Tsipras will later Monday receive a mandate to form a government from President Prokopis Pavlopoulos.
"We unite our flags and our forces under the banner of honesty," he said.

The scale of Syriza's triumph was substantially bigger than had been expected, with opinion polls ahead of the election projecting a narrow lead over New Democracy of between 0.7 and 3.0 percentage points.

Tsipras even managed to weather the defection of 25 of his lawmakers who formed a rival anti-austerity party in the wake of his deal with international creditors for a new 86-billion-euro rescue.

Nearly 44 percent of voters sat out the election -- the third vote for Greeks this year including a referendum on austerity -- a significant rise in the previous abstention rate of 36 percent in January.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team