SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras pledges to restore Greece's dignity after historic victory in parliament

Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras pledged to restore Greece's dignity on Sunday night after the first official results of the crucial parliamentary polls showed a historic victory for his party.

"Today Greek people made history... Greek people have spoken. We all respect the electorate's choice. Greece leaves behind austerity, fear, five years of humiliation and pain. We move forward with optimism and hope," the 40-year old leader told a crowd of cheering supporters in a central Athens square.

Anti- bailout SYRIZA wins approximately 35.8 percent of votes against 28.3 percent for the New Democracy (ND) party according to the official Interior Ministry estimates with about 51 percent of votes counted.

It was still not clear whether the SYRIZA will secure absolute majority in the next parliament to govern alone, but it will be the first time in Greece's modern history that a Left party leads a government after WWII.

In his first celebratory speech on Sunday night Tsipras promised hard work, made an appeal to all Greeks to rebuild the debt- laden country together and repeated SYRIZA's request for a renegotiation with international lenders for a fair, viable and mutually beneficial resolution of the Greek sovereign debt problem.

He underlined that revived scenarios over a possible confrontation with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund creditors, a Greek bankruptcy and exit from the euro zone, will not be realized.

Tsipras also stated that the outcome of Sunday's elections was a clear message of the wind of change blowing across the entire European continent.

In regards to SYRIZA's first priority he stressed that the goal was to restore the lost dignity. Enditem