Iias Kasidiaris,a former Golden Dawn politician who had been found guilty along with others of leading a criminal organization and face 13 years in prison.Credit:AP
Ahead of Sunday’s election,parliament had introduced tougher rules on election eligibility designed to block Kasidiaris from running as a candidate. A party he founded in prison was also disqualified and he switched his support to the Spartans.
“We have defeated an arrogant enemy ... this is a great triumph for Greece and our homeland,” Kasidiaris wrote in a tweet from prison in central Greece.The centre-right New Democracy party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s election,handing conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis a second term as prime minister.
Jubilant Mitsotakis supporters gathered outside party headquarters in Athens,cheering,clapping,setting off fireworks and waving blue and white party flags. Near complete results show his party has won just over 40.5 per cent of the vote,crushing his main rival,the left-wing Syriza party,which was struggling to reach 18 per cent,2 percentage points lower than the last elections in May.
“With today’s electoral result,Greece opens a new,historic chapter in its course,” Mitsotakis said in a televised statement. Voters,he said,“gave us a strong mandate to move faster on the course of the big changes our country needs. In a loud and mature way they have permanently closed a traumatic cycle of lies and toxicity that held the country back and divided society.”
His second term as prime minister “can transform Greece at a dynamic pace of development which will increase salaries and reduce inequality,with better and free public health care,with a more effective and digital state and a strong country,” he added.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis leader of the centre-right New Democracy waves to supporters outside the headquarters of the party in Athens.Credit:AP
Sunday’s vote came just over a weekafter a migrant ship capsized and sank off the western coast of Greece,leaving hundreds of people dead and missing and calling into question the actions of Greek authorities and the country’s strict migration policy. But the disaster,one of the worst in the Mediterranean in recent years,did not affect the election,with domestic economic issues at the forefront of voters’ minds.