ATHENS: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras conceded defeat on Sunday after a partial vote count showed opposition conservatives comfortably winning the first parliamentary election since the country emerged from its international bailouts.

The conservative New Democracy party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis had 39.7 percent of the vote compared to Tsipras’s Syriza party with 31.5 percent after nearly 60 percent of ballots were tallied.

The result was a stinging blow to Tsipras, who had insisted he could overturn a sizable gap in opinion polls running up to the election, which he asked to hold several months before his term expires in the fall.

“The citizens have made their choice. We fully respect the popular vote,” Tsipras said in his concession speech, adding that he had phoned Mitsotakis to congratulate him.

“I want to assure the Greek people that ... we will protect the rights of working people with a responsible but dynamic opposition,” he said.

“I wish and hope that the return of New Democracy to government will not lead to vengeance ... particularly toward the significant achievements to protect the social majority and the workers,” Tsipras continued.

Official projections based on early partial results also showed the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party teetering on the lower side of a three percent threshold needed to be in parliament. Golden Dan became the third largest party in parliament during Greece’s financial crisis. Greece is gradually emerging from the crippling financial crisis that saw unemployment and poverty levels skyrocket and the economy shrink by a quarter.

The country was dependent for survival until last summer on three successive bailouts and had to make massive spending cuts and tax hikes to qualify for the rescue loans.

Tsipras, 44, called the election three months before schedule after his left-wing Syriza party suffered a severe defeat in European Union and local elections in May and early last month.

To gain ground, he increasingly appealed to a middle class struggling under a heavy tax burden, much of it imposed by his government.

Tsipras led his small Coalition of the Radical Left to power in 2015 on promises to repeal the austerity measures of Greece’s first two bailouts.

But after months of tumultuous negotiations with international creditors that saw Greece nearly crash out of the European Union’s joint currency, he was forced to change tack, signing up to a third bailout and imposing the accompanying spending cuts.

He also cemented a deal with neighbouring North Macedonia under which that country changed its name from plain “Macedonia.”

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2019