Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party wins Greek vote, to form coalition
ATHENS — A weary Greek electorate chose to keep the leftist Syriza party of former prime minister Alexis Tsipras in power Sunday, even as the nation faces twin crises of greater economic austerity and a flood of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
Tsipras was handed his second parliament election victory this year. Standing before supporters in an Athens square Sunday night he called the results "the people’s victory. ... I feel vindicated. The Greek people gave us a clear mandate to keep fighting."
After winning more than a third of the vote, Tsipras, 41, said he will form a coalition government with the small, right-wing Independent Greeks, his previous coalition partner.
His chief political rival, Vangelis Meimarakis of the center-right New Democracy party, conceded Sunday after the polls closed. "I congratulate him," Meimarakis said.
The election comes at a critical juncture for this birthplace for democracy as the next prime minister must implement severe economic reforms to secure a $97 billion bailout from European creditors. The bailout alone will require parliament to pass dozens of new laws by the end of year.
The Greek economy risks collapse without that money and exile from the eurozone if it fails to enact necessary changes.
The country is struggling, meanwhile, to cope with more than 300,000 migrants who have arrived on Greek shores this year fleeing war and poverty. The country is sorely underresourced to meet its geographical fate as a gateway nation for those pouring in from Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan.
Voter turnout Sunday was 55%, down from 63% earlier this year. But the results demonstrated continued staying power of Europe's leftist parties, coming on the heels of Britain's Labour Party picking hard-line leftist Jeremy Corbyn as leader this month. Like-minded political efforts are underway in Spain and Ireland, according to TheWashington Post.
Tsipras' party was first elected in January after he vowed to take a hard line against the austerity demands of the European Union creditors. In July, Greeks rejected the creditors’ demands in a national referendum, but days later Tsipras accepted the terms.
As his party splintered in support of the deal, Tsipras stepped down as prime minister last month and called for Sunday's elections, hoping to receive a new mandate.
New Democracy's Meimarakis, 61, offered voters a return to stability if his party prevailed.
Panos Skourletis, a Syriza member and former energy minister, applauded the results. "It is the first time a party brings in a tough bailout deal and is rewarded," he told a Greek television station, the Associated Press reported. "Until now, the electorate was clearly anti-bailout."
Tsipras had called on voters to give the next government a strong showing that will allow it to govern for a full four-year term and to “continue with the same decisiveness, the same self-denial to fight the battles for the defense of our people’s rights, not only in Europe but this time within the country, too.”
“I am optimistic,” he said after voting in Athens. “Tomorrow a new day starts.”
Other voters were less than optimistic.
“I don’t see how we Greeks can pull this one through,” Alexandra Berioti, 30, an actor voting at a school in the Kallithea area of Athens, told Paste BN. “The bailout measures are unbearable."
She added: "For us younger people now starting out on their professional life, full of qualifications, energy and ideas there are no opportunities. But abstaining from these elections isn’t an option.”
Giorgos Pavlopoulos, 35, a business consultant, said: “I am at once convinced that nothing will change with the elections and that everything is still doable. We have reached rock bottom; the only way is up. In any case, voting is essential.”
“All I want is stability for my country," said Savvas Moschopoulos, 73, a retired seaman. "I want a government that will steady the ship.”
Syriza's campaign focused on doing away with the staid and often corrupt politics of the past.
"Given that the (third bailout) has been voted by an overwhelming majority of members of the Greek parliament, there is nothing at stake in these elections," Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, assistant professor of political science at the University of Athens, told the Greek publication Ekathimerini. He added that whoever wins "will have very small room for maneuver regarding policy measures."
Lyman reported from Rome. Contributing: Gregg Zoroya in McLean, Va.