SYRIZA Leftists win general elections in Greece

ATHENS. KAZINFORM - Greece's Radical Left SYRIZA party celebrated its second victory in general polls in eight months on Sunday night, and was set to return in office with its Right-wing former junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks (ANEL), promising to "continue the battle for Greek people's rights in Greece and abroad."

SYRIZA has won about 35.5 percent of votes against 28.2 percent for the conservatives of the New Democracy (ND) party led by Evangelos Meimarakis, with 80 percent of the votes counted, according to the official results released by the Interior Ministry.

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

The official final results were expected to be released by Monday noon and Tsipras was expected to receive a three-day exploratory mandate from the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos to form a government, under the Greek Constitution.

The new government could be sworn in on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, according to local "Vima" (Tribune) daily.

Based on the preliminary official results pollsters estimated that SYRIZA will control 145 seats in the next 300-member strong assembly and ANEL 10 seats.

The 41-year old Leftist leader did not manage to win again the absolute majority he was looking for when he quit in late August triggering the snap polls.

However, he did not either lose entirely the bet he placed, political analysts noted in their first reactions to the results.

SYRIZA retained the first place and by renewing the coalition partnership with ANEL they jointly still hold a slim majority in the new parliament.

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