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Anti-bailout Radical Left SYRIZA wins Greek national elections: final official results

Xinhua, January 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Greece's anti-bailout Radical Left SYRIZA party has won Sunday's national elections, according to the final official results released by the Interior Ministry on Monday, Speaker of Parliament Evangelos Meimarakis announced.

The Greek official made the statement to media exiting the Presidential Mansion in Athens after formally briefing Greek President Karolos Papoulias on the results.

SYRIZA won 36.3 percent of the votes against 27.8 percent for the conservative New Democracy (ND) party of outgoing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

Falling marginally short of the needed threshold for clear parliamentary majority, SYRIZA secured 149 seats in the 300-member strong parliament, while ND won 76 seats.

The far- Right Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) party and the centrist Potami (River) party received respectively 6.3 percent of votes and 6 percent and 17 seats each.

The Greek Communist party KKE ranked fifth garnering 5.5 percent with 15 seats.

The nationalistic anti-bailout Independent Greeks which have already announced that they will join a ruling coalition government with SYRIZA followed with 4.7 percent of votes and 13 seats.

The socialist PASOK party which co-ruled with ND won the same percentage and number of seats and was the last party to enter the new assembly which convenes on February 5.

Later on Monday afternoon SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras is to formally receive a mandate to form government from Papoulias and to be sworn in as Prime Minister at the Presidential Mansion and by Wednesday he was expected to present the lineup of the cabinet.

It will be the first time after WWII that Greece will be ruled by a Left- led government.

In his first statements after the closing of the ballots on Sunday night Tsipras talked about a historic victory and a message to Europe that Greek people have voted down austerity policies introduced five years ago to avert default.

The new government was expected to be under pressure in coming weeks and months from Greece's international lenders, according to analysts, as Tsipras has pledged to reverse austerity and reform measures and push for a new write off of part of the Greek sovereign debt.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund creditors have said that they would cooperate with any new government, stressing the need to proceed with the fiscal discipline and reform drive to avoid a slide back to the brink of meltdown.

Tsipras has struck a more conciliatory tone in his latest statements, commentators have noted, assuring that there will be no rift with creditors which could lead to a bankruptcy and Greece's exit from the euro zone. Enditem