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2nd LD Writethru: "Greek people gave us new clear mandate for four year term": Leftist leader

Xinhua, September 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

Greece's former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras welcomed the results of Sunday's early general elections as a new "clear mandate" by Greek people for a four year term in office.

Addressing a crowd of his Radical Left SYRIZA supporters at the party's central campaign kiosk in a square near the parliament building in Athens, the 41-year old leader pledged to "continue the fight for peoples' rights in Greece and abroad."

He also confirmed scenarios of forming a new government with the junior coalition partner of the first seven-month Leftist-led administration by embracing Panos Kammenos, the leader of the Right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) party on the same stage.

Acknowledging the difficulties awaiting the next government, Tsipras pledged hard work to lead Greece out of the five year debt crisis and fight the "old regime of corruption."

According to the first official projection based on the official results so far, SYRIZA will win Greece's second national polls of this year by 35.5 percent of votes against 28 percent for the conservatives of the New Democracy (ND) party.

The two parties had respectively secured 36.3 percent versus 27.8 percent in January's national polls.

With about 40 percent of the votes counted, SYRIZA receives 145 seats in the next 300-member strong parliament (down from 149 seats in the previous assembly) and ANEL 10 seats.

In the January 25 elections that brought the Leftists in office for the first time in Greece's modern history, the two-partite coalition won jointly 162 seats.

However, as the two former anti-bailout partners made an U-turn and eventually signed a third painful bailout program with the country's international lenders this summer, they have paid the political price.

Following a party split within SYRIZA over the bailout Tsipras' first government resigned in late August triggering the early polls seeking to form a new more stable government to make the necessary steps to address the crisis. Endit