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Anti-Austerity Party Appears Poised to Win Greek Elections - New York Times




Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party, cast his vote in Athens on Sunday. Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press




ATHENS — Bluntly rejecting the punishing economics of austerity, Greece on Sunday appeared poised to send a warning signal to the rest of Europe as exit polls showed the left-wing, anti-austerity Syriza party with a strong lead in national elections as the party’s tough-talking, charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, seemed certain to become the country’s next prime minister.


Exit polls, released on national television after voting stations closed at 7 p.m., showed that Syriza was running , far ahead of the governing New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and could end up witha strong plurality in the multiparty race. It remained unclear whether Syriza would be able to win an outright parliamentary majority, or if it would have to form a coalition with one or more of the trailing parties.



Syriza’s victory, if expected, would represent a dramatic milestone at a moment when Europe’s continuing economic crisis has stirred an angry, populist backlash from France to Spain to Italy. Syriza would become the first anti-austerity party to take power in a eurozone country. Syriza has also shattered the two-party political establishment that has dominated Greece for four decades.




Supporters of Alexis Tsipras cheered as exit poll results were announced in Athens. Marko Djurica/Reuters

“Democracy will return to Greece,” said Mr. Tsipras, 40, speaking to a swarm of reporters and photographers, as he cast his ballot at an Athens voting station. “The message is that our common future in Europe is not the future of austerity.”


Youthful, with a seemingly unflappable demeanor, Mr. Tsipras has worked diligently to soften his image as an anti-Europe radical, joking that his opponents had accused him of everything except stealing other men’s wives. On the campaign trail, he has promised to clean up Greece’s corrupt political system, reform the country’s public administration and reduce the tax burden on the middle class while cracking down on tax evasion by the country’s oligarchical business class.


But his biggest promise has been his pledge to force Greece’s creditors, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, to renegotiate the punishing terms of the country’s $240 billion financial bailout. Wracked by punitive, belt-tightening policies, Greece has endured a historic collapse since the 2009 economic crisis, as economic output has shrunk by 25 percent and unemployment still hovers at roughly 26 percent.


“He is campaigning on change and the end of austerity,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, who argues that Mr. Tsipras must move toward a more centrist stance if he hopes to revive the economy and keep Greek solvent.


“If he can pull that off, that will be the best possible outcome for Greece and for Europe, because it would show that these protests movements ultimately recognize reality, which is that they are in the euro, and they have to play by the rules,” he added.


Mr. Tsipras will face immediate challenges. Greece is still waiting for a 7 billion euro bailout payment that Athens needs to keep the state running and to pay off billions in debt obligations due in the coming months. He has also demanded that creditors write down at least half of Greece’s 319 billion euro public debt in order to give the country more breathing room for a spending stimulus that he says could enliven the economy and slash unemployment.


A Syriza victory would be certain to lift euroskeptic parties elsewhere in Europe, especially in Spain, where the left-leaning, anti-austerity Podemos party, not yet a year old, is already polling at 20 percent in national polls. The leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, joined Mr. Tsipras this week during Syriza’s final campaign rally.


“What the whole debate about Greece and Syriza highlights is that voter anxieties, voter resentment, and electoral disillusionment over austerity policies can be expressed at the ballot,” said Jens Bastian, an Athens-based economic consultant and a former member of the European Commission’s task force on Greece. “The example of Greece today may become a precursor to what happens in other countries like Spain, Portugal or Italy.”


Mr. Tsipras has said he wants to negotiate directly with Mrs. Merkel and other European leaders to reduce Greece’s debt burden, even as some officials have characterized Mr. Tsipras’s demands as unrealistic and rife with the potential to drive Greece toward the brink of default — or even outside the eurozone.


Earlier concerns that a Syriza-led Greece would exit the common currency have been fading, but Mr. Tsipras’s confrontational stance on renegotiating the bailout could create the equivalent of a game of chicken with Greece’s creditors to see who blinks first. Mr. Tsipras has insisted he will not adhere to the bailout’s austerity conditions; Greece’s creditors insist they will not disburse funds unless he does.


Mr. Tsipras has pledged immediate action, including restoring electricity to poor families who have lost services for unpaid bills. He has promised to raise the minimum wage to 751 euros a month from 586 euros a month for all workers; restore collective bargaining agreements; prohibit mass layoffs; and create 300,000 jobs.


Out on the streets of Athens, voters expressed a range of emotions, from anger to betrayal to fear to even hope. One woman, dressed in a long coat, said she had voted for Syriza because the current Greek government, led by New Democracy, had “transformed me from a lady into a poor woman.”


“I voted for Syriza because Samaras betrayed the party and the country,” said the woman, who only gave her first name, Eugenia, 76, a pensioner who once supported New Democracy and Mr. Samaras. “I’m doing this for my two children who had to leave and work abroad and for all of the young Greeks who hold degrees and have to work as waiters for 300 euros.”


At a polling station in Mets, a middle-class district near central Athens, Achilleas Mandrakis, 47, runs a garage but said he was struggling to stay afloat after his wife lost her job at a shoe store. “I always voted New Democracy, and I never trusted the leftists,” he said. “But enough is enough, really. We kept giving them a chance, but they messed up. They’ve made our lives miserable.” Mr. Mandrakis added, “at least a different party might change something in this mess, anything.”



Dimitris Bounias and Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.










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