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Anti-Austerity Party Wins Decisive Victory in Greece - New York Times




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




ATHENS — Greece rejected the punishing economics of austerity on Sunday and sent a warning signal to the rest of Europe as the left-wing Syriza party won a decisive victory in national elections, positioning its tough-talking leader, Alexis Tsipras, to become the next prime minister.


With 60 percent of the vote counted, Syriza had 36 percent, almost eight points ahead of the governing center-right New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had conceded defeat. The only uncertainty was whether Syriza would muster an outright parliamentary majority or if it would have to form a coalition.


Appearing before a throng of supporters outside Athens University late Sunday night, Mr. Tsipras, 40, declared that the era of austerity was over and promised to revive the Greek economy. He also said his government would not allow Greece’s creditors to strangle the country.



“Greece will now move ahead with hope, and reach out to Europe, and Europe is going to change,” he said. “The verdict is clear: We will bring an end to the vicious circle of austerity.”




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

Syriza’s victory is a dramatic milestone for Europe at a time when continuing economic weakness has stirred an angry, populist backlash from France to Spain to Italy, as more voters grow fed up with policies that demand sacrifice to address the discipline of financial markets without delivering more jobs and prosperity. Syriza is poised to become the first anti-austerity party to take power in a eurozone country, and would shatter the two-party political establishment that has dominated Greece for four decades.


“Democracy will return to Greece,” said Mr. Tsipras, speaking earlier to a swarm of reporters and photographers as he cast his ballot in Athens. “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 — and the one that has stirred deep anxiety in Brussels and Berlin as well as on financial markets — has been his pledge to force Greece’s creditors, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, to renegotiate the terms of the country’s 240 billion euro financial bailout. Squeezed by belt-tightening policies intended to stabilize the government’s finances, 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.


In setting up a showdown in coming weeks with Germany and the country’s other creditors, Mr. Tsipras has argued that easing the bailout terms would allow more government spending, stimulating more economic growth and employment as well as helping the Greeks who need it the most.


“Tsipras won because those who imposed austerity never thought about the effects of such drastic policies that impoverished millions of people,” said Paul De Grauwe, a professor at the London School of Economics and a former adviser to the European Commission. “In a world where people are so hit, they just don’t remain passive. Their reaction is to turn to the politicians who will change the process.”


Mr. Tsipras will face immediate challenges. Greece is still waiting for a 7 billion euro bailout payment that Athens needs to keep the government 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 would give the economy a much-needed jolt.


“This is a turning of a page, a historical moment for all of Europe,” Yiannis Milios, the chief economist for Syriza, told reporters. “The Greek people are taking their future into their own hands.”


Europe “cannot go on with deflation, recession, increasing unemployment and over indebtednesses,” he said. “Greece points the way. Our country, our people, are the groundbreakers of a very big change.”


A Syriza victory would lift the hopes of euroskeptic parties elsewhere in Europe, especially in Spain, where the left-leaning, anti-austerity Podemos party, not yet a year old, is already drawing 20 percent support in national opinion polls. The leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, joined Mr. Tsipras last 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 out of the eurozone group that shares Europe’s common currency.




Continuing economic weakness has stirred a populist backlash as more voters grow fed up with policies that demand sacrifice. Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

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 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.


Jens Weidmann, president of Bundesbank, the German central bank, warned that Greece would remain dependent on outside financial support and that the new Greek government “should not make promises that the country cannot afford.”


“I hope the new government won’t call into question what is expected and what has already been achieved,” Mr. Weidmann said in an interview with Germany’s public broadcaster.


On the streets of Athens, voters expressed a range of emotions as they went to the polls, from anger to betrayal to fear to hope.


At a polling station in Mets, a middle-class district near central Athens, Achilleas Mandrakis, 47, said he runs a garage but 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.


“At least a different party might change something in this mess, anything.”


In a brief news conference late Sunday night, Mr. Samaras vowed that his party would continue to play a role in Greek politics and defended his government. “I received the country at the edge of a cliff,” he said. “I was asked to take burning coals into my hands and I did it.”


Mr. Samaras said that Greece had moved away from deficits and recession and that his government had “restored the credibility of the country.”


For Syriza, the immediate question was whether the party would win the 151 seats needed to have an outright majority in Parliament. Projections showed that the result would be very close, and if he falls short, Mr. Tsipras might align with the fringe party, Independent Greeks, a center-right, anti-austerity movement that might push for a harder line in any debt negotiations. Early returns also showed that the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party was in third place with roughly 6 percent of the total vote.


While Greece sees itself as being punished by creditors’ demands, Germany and a host of European officials have argued that Greece and other troubled eurozone nations must clean up the high debts and deficits at the root of Europe’s debt crisis. They say Athens has still failed to make enough headway on the structural reforms necessary to put the economy on better footing, and they are pressing Greece to raise billions of euros through more budgetary cutbacks and taxes.


Many analysts say Mr. Tsipras must moderate his campaign promises and take a more centrist approach if he wants to save the economy and keep Greece solvent. “That will be the best possible outcome for Greece and for Europe, because it would show that these protest movements ultimately recognize reality – which is that they are in the euro, and they have to play by the rules,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.


Otherwise, he warned, “things could get a lot worse.”


“Very, very quickly,” he added.



Dimitris Bounias and Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.










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