Left-wing party is apparent winner of Greek elections

By Jessica Camille Aguirre

Sept. 20, 2015 12:50 PM PT

dpa

ATHENS, Greece Preliminary official results in Greece’s snap elections showed former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza party pulling far ahead on Sunday with nearly 30 per cent of the vote counted, prompting conservative rival New Democracy to concede defeat.

Tallies by the Ministry of the Interior showed Syriza with 35.4 percent, conservative New Democracy with 28.2 percent and far-right extremist Golden Dawn with 7.3 percent. Depending on the final count, even if it retains its lead Syriza will likely need to find a coalition partner to form a government.

Party members said that the question was not whether Syriza would win, but by how much.

“This result is a message for Europe, that the left forces are present and that they can and will move things over the next period of time,” said Kostas Tsipras, government official and a cousin of the former prime minister.

New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis congratulated Tsipras, calling on him to form a government.

With one fifth of the ballots counted, Syriza was expected to secure 144 seats in parliament including a 50-seat bonus for the leading party, leaving them seven short of an outright majority of 151 seats. New Democracy would have 75 seats, and Golden Dawn 19. Centrist, pro-Europe Pasok was expected to get 17 seats, and Communist party KKE 15.

Tsipras had said he resigned and triggered the elections because he needed a renewed mandate to implement the terms of a bailout program that included $97 billion in funding for the struggling Greek economy.

Those terms include further budget cuts and tactics to raise money for the state, including privatization of assets. While the measures were widely unpopular, they were considered necessary to secure financing that would keep Greece in the eurozone.

Nevertheless, neck-and-neck surveys over the last weeks seemed to threaten Tsipras’ vast popularity, and it seemed fleetingly unclear whether Syriza voters would remain loyal after the disappointing compromises conceded to by their leader.

Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.