Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will return to power in Greece.
On Sunday his Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza,
received 35.5 percent of the vote, according to an official projection
by the Interior Ministry based on more than half of votes counted.
The center-right New Democracy, whose leader Evangelos Meimarakis was defeated, is expected to obtain 28 percent of support.
Tsipras will now have to secure a new mandate after he yielded to the conditions of European leaders for more austerity in the cash-strapped country.
With
Syriza set to fall short of a majority in the 300-seat parliament,
Tsipras, 41, will enter negotiations to build a viable government with
the same coalition partner as before, beating expectations he might conclude
a deal with a more moderate party.
In a year marked by the impasse between Greece and its European creditors, the difference now is that the new government will have little space to maneuver after Tsipras gave in to more spending cuts and tax rises in exchange for a new bailout program.
During the campaign, both Syriza and New Democracy said they would not challenge the bailout deal and intend to implement its terms. Investors showed confidence in recent weeks that the worst is over for Greece, with government bonds posting the biggest returns in the euro zone over the past month, and the Athens stock market also rallying.
Meanwhile, an international review of Greece’s progress on reforms is due before the
end of the year, with a positive verdict necessary for money to flow
from the 86 billion-euro aid package. The disbursement of funds to recapitalize Greek
banks, which have been battered by deposit outflows that prompted
capital controls, will be of particular significance.
Stathis Kalyvas, a professor of politics at Yale University, commented that on the one hand, Greek citizens voted in exactly the same government, so nothing changed. But "on the other hand, the electorate brought in a party promising to implement a completely different set of policies. In short, everything changed. The Greek political saga is set to go on.”
