Greece will proudly raise its head again, pledges new PM after poll victory

Greece's new leader today vowed the country will “proudly raise its head again” after his conservative New Democracy party stormed to victory in a snap election.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis was expected to be sworn in as premier today as official results confirmed a resounding win over Left-wing Alexis Tsipras, who led Greece through the tumultuous final years of its international bailouts.

With almost all of the votes in yesterday’s election counted, New Democracy gained 39.85 per cent compared with 31.53 for Mr Tsipras’s Syriza.

“A painful cycle has closed,” Mr Mitsotakis said in a televised address. “I will not fail to honour your hopes,” he added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and outgoing European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker called to offer congratulations.

The result gives New Democracy an outright majority with 158 seats in the 300-member Greek parliament.

The extreme Right-wing Golden Dawn narrowly failed to make the three per cent threshold needed to enter parliament — a massive fall of support for a party that had become the third-largest in the legislature during the country’s financial crisis.

The results indicated that voters were bucking a recent trend in Europe of citizens rejecting the political mainstream and turning to populist and eurosceptic parties.

“I asked for a strong mandate to change Greece. You offered it generously,” Mr Mitsotakis, 51, said in his victory speech. “From today, a difficult but beautiful fight begins.”

The election was the first since Greece emerged from three international bailouts that were dependent on successive governments implementing strict austerity measures, including major tax hikes and spending cuts. The crisis saw unemployment and poverty rocket and the economy shrink by a quarter.

Mr Mitsotakis is the son of a former prime minister, brother of an ex-foreign minister and uncle to a newly-elected mayor of Athens. He pledged to make Greece more business-friendly, attract investment, modernise a notorious bureaucracy and cut taxes.

Mr Tsipras, 44, called the election three months early after Syriza suffered severe defeats in EU and local elections. He conceded defeat and said he had called Mr Mitsotakis to congratulate him.