Greece’s conservative New Democracy party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis has vowed to speed up reforms following his landslide election victory.
The country’s second election in five weeks on Sunday granted the Prime Minister a comfortable parliamentary majority to form a government for a second four-year term.
Jubilant supporters gathered outside party headquarters in Athens as near-complete results showed Mr Mitsotakis’s party has won just over 40.5% of the vote, crushing his main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, which was struggling to reach 18% – two percentage points lower than the last elections in May.
“With today’s electoral result, Greece opens a new, historic chapter in its course,” Mr Mitsotakis said in a televised statement.
Voters, he said, “gave us a strong mandate to move faster on the course of the big changes our country needs”.
The Prime Minister added: “In a loud and mature way they have permanently closed a traumatic cycle of lies and toxicity that held the country back and divided society.”
His second term “can transform Greece at a dynamic pace of development which will increase salaries and reduce inequality, with better and free public health care, with a more effective and digital state and a strong country”, he added.
Sunday’s vote came just over a week after a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece, leaving hundreds of people dead and missing and calling into question the actions of Greek authorities and the country’s strict migration policy.
But the disaster, one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years, did not affect the election, with domestic economic issues at the forefront of voters’ minds.
Mr Mitsotakis’ party was projected to win 158 of Parliament’s 300 seats, thanks to a change in the electoral law that grants the winning party bonus seats.
The previous election in May, conducted under a proportional representation system, left him five seats short of a majority despite winning nearly 41% of the vote, and he had decided to seek a stronger mandate in a second election rather than to seek to form a coalition government with a smaller party.
Voter turnout, however, was low on Sunday, at just under 53% of eligible voters, compared to just over 61% in the May vote.
In all, eight parties were surpassing the 3% threshold to enter Parliament, including an ultra-religious party and a far-right party backed by a jailed former legislator from the Nazi-inspired, and now outlawed, Golden Dawn party.
Mr Mitsotakis, 55, campaigned on a platform of securing economic growth and political stability as Greece gradually recovers from a brutal financial crisis which has lasted almost a decade.
His main rival, 48-year-old Alexis Tsipras, served as prime minister from 2015 to 2019 – some of the most turbulent years of Greece’s financial crisis. His performance on Sunday leaves him fighting for his political survival.
After his poor showing in May elections, Mr Tsipras had struggled to rally his voter base, a task complicated by splinter parties formed by some of his former associates.
“The electoral results is obviously negative for us,” a subdued Mr Tsipras said in a televised statement.
“We have suffered a serious electoral defeat. But I believe that the electoral result is mainly negative for society and for democracy,” he added, pointing to the three small right-wing parties winning enough votes to make it into Parliament.
It would be up to the party members, he said, to decide on his fate, and the course the party itself must now take.
