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Greece
leaves behind five years of humiliation and suffering, fear and
authoritarianism, said the leader of the winning Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras.
He’s moving on Monday to build a stable government and plans to get rid of
Athens’ three main creditors.
Tsipras
was addressing thousands of cheering supporters at a rally in Athens. Syriza
won 149 seats in the 300-seat parliament election.
The
leader expects to be sworn in as the country’s PM on Monday. By Wednesday he
will have a government in place, a Syriza official told Reuters.
Tsipraswill
meet Panos Kammenos, the head of the anti-austerity party Independent Greeks,
which also opposes Greece's bailout deal. Syriza now needs a coalition partner
to get a working parliamentary majority of 151. Independent Greeks managed to
secure 13 seats at the election.
He
also plans to meet the heads of centrist To Potami and the Communist Party of
Greece.
The
40-year-old leader plans to create the first eurozone government elected to
undo the conservative polices of budgetary rigor imposed by German Chancellor
Angela Merkel on Greece as a condition of the bailout back in 2010.
"The
verdict of our people means the troika is finished…The verdict of the Greek
people ends, beyond any doubt, the vicious circle of austerity in our country.” Tspiras was referring to three main creditors of the country – the European
Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
He
added that the new Greek government “will
be ready to cooperate and negotiate for the first time with our peers a just,
mutually beneficial and viable solution.” His campaign ran under
the slogan "Hope is
coming!"
Tsipras
said the country’s "foremost
priority” is for its people to “regain
their lost dignity.”
"Our
priority is to deal with the wounds of the crisis, provide justice, break with
the oligarchs, the establishment and corruption…We have ahead of us a major
chance for Greece and Europe."
“We are happy because we have democracy in our
country,” a Syriza supporter told RT. “We will have better healthcare and
improved school system."
“We
are happy to celebrate. It can’t change [in] one day, but we hope Syriza will
give us democracy education and freedom of speech,”
she added.
The
Greek debt crisis started back in 2010 and since then the country has
undertaken broad economic overhauls and cutbacks. The economy suffered a deep
recession which resulted in a high unemployment rate, increasing property taxes
and a low minimum wage.
EU
leaders reacted differently to Syriza’s victory. France’s President Francois
Hollande congratulated Tsipras, stressing "the
friendship uniting France and Greece,” a statement said, as cited
by AFP.
However,
UK PM David Cameron said he wasn’t optimistic about Greece’s future.
"The Greek election
will increase economic uncertainty across Europe. That's why the UK must stick
to our plan, delivering security at home," Cameron tweeted.
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