Greeks turn right

Conservative party beats incumbents

Greek conservative opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis comfortably won a parliamentary election Sunday as voters rejected Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras after a tumultuous four years of the country struggling through a crippling financial crisis.

With more than 80 percent of votes counted, Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party had 39.7 percent of the vote compared with Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza party at 31.6 percent.

The extreme right-wing Golden Dawn, founded by neo-Nazi supporters, teetered below the 3 percent threshold needed to enter parliament — a massive fall of support for a party that had become the third-largest in the Greek legislature during the country’s financial crisis.

The results indicated that Greek voters were bucking a recent trend in Europe of citizens rejecting the political mainstream and turning to populist and euroskeptic parties.

“I asked for a strong mandate to change Greece. You offered it generously,” Mitsotakis (pictured, right) said in his victory speech.

Tsipras (left) said he phoned Mitsotakis to congratulate him.

“The citizens have made their choice. We fully respect the popular vote,” Tsipras, 44, said in a speech from central Athens.

He said his party would work as “a responsible but dynamic opposition” to the government.

Mitsotakis, 51, the son of a former prime minister, brother of a former foreign minister and uncle to a newly elected mayor of Athens, fought during the campaign to shed the image of family privilege.

On Sunday, he vowed to abide by his campaign pledges to cut taxes, attract investment and improve the job market. He had been ahead in opinion polls for three years and managed to build a sizeable lead.

The election was the first held since Greece emerged from three international bailouts that were dependent on successive governments implementing austerity measures, including tax hikes and spending cuts.

The financial crisis saw unemployment and poverty skyrocket and the economy shrink by a quarter.