Tsipras Rewins His Post as the Prime Minister of Greece

• 09.22.2015, 16:59
•  Europe,  World

Alexis Tsipras will remain Greece’s Prime Minister, following the country’s third national vote this year. With almost all the votes counted from Sunday’s elections, his left-wing party, Syriza, won 35% of the votes. The strongest opponent, the conservative New Democracy party, conceded defeat on Sunday afternoon; the results showed it had received 28%. Syriza claimed 145 of 300 parliamentary seats, short of the 151 seats needed for an absolute majority. It swiftly announced a continuation of the coalition with Independent Greeks, who have ten seats, forming a slim majority government, Euronews reports. 

With a better result than forecast by opinion polls, he can now form a government with only one small coalition partner, which would give him wider opportunities in the governing the country. 

Tsipras' number one priority, according to him will be stabilizing the Greek economy. 

''The immediate objective of the coming period is the full restoration of stability in the economy and in the operation of banks and broadening the ground we gained in negotiations with lenders, with the first crucial battle debt relief,'' the Prime Minister said.

According to Daily Mail, Tsipras' victory paves way for the controversial EU bailout to go-ahead, but the new government will have little time to waste.

Next month creditors are expected to review progress of reforms as part of the bailout , while the government will also have to draft the 2016 state budget, overhaul the pension system, raise a series of taxes, including on farmers, carry out privatizations and merge social security funds.

The noteworthy thing is that after five national general elections in six years, Tsipras now aims to stay on for a full four-year term, having jettisoned opponents to an 86-billion-euro bailout deal from his own party and apparently after having convinced sufficient Greek voters that the rescue deal is the best option for the future of the country.

"This is a major personal triumph for Tsipras,"  political commentator Aristides Hatzis said. "His political hegemony is (now) unprecedented," Reuters reports.

The big victory makes it easier for Tsipras to reinstate trusted members of the cabinet that served during the often turbulent seven-month coalition he formed after his first election win in January.

It is also interesting that Tsipras’ first comments upon taking the oath of office were not about his country's economic woes but about Europe's migration crisis, the worst on the continent since the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Greece has been the main point of entry for tens of thousands of migrants who arrive on its shores by sea and mostly continue onwards over land across the Balkan peninsula to richer EU countries further north.

Greece complains that it lacks the capacity to enforce EU rules which would require it to register all arrivals and has sought more help from the bloc.

As for the EU and its main leaders, most of them have already congratulated Tsipras on his great victory. European Council president Donald Tusk said he hoped the election results would ''provide for the political stability necessary to face all the challenges at hand,'' The Guardian tells.

However, the choice is made, and the only thing that remains is to hope that Tsipras will find the best compromise between the creditors' demands and the needs and wishes of Greek people, not letting down any of them, as he actually promised to.