Greece's conservative New Democracy party storm to victory in parliamentary election

Greece's conservative New Democracy party has stormed to victory in a parliamentary election, as voters have given reformist Kyriakos Mitsotakis another four-year term as the Prime Minister. With most votes counted, centre-right New Democracy was leading with 40.5 percent of the vote and 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament, interior ministry figures showed. 

It was more than 20 points clear of Syriza, a radical leftist party that won elections in 2015 at the peak of a debilitating debt crisis and ran the country until 2019 when it lost to New Democracy.

Mitsotakis told cheering crowds at New Democracy headquarters in Athens that he has a "strong mandate"



to move faster on the path of change. Fifty-five-year-old Mitsotakis, a former banker has promised to boost revenue from the vital tourist industry, create jobs and increase wages to near the European Union average. Sunday's vote was a humiliating defeat for Syriza, which lost more than 30 MPs. Fringe parties of the political left and right - including an anti-immigrant party calling themselves the Spartans - got a foothold in Parliament.

Yesterday's vote was the second in the past five weeks, as a first poll on May 21 held under a different electoral system failed to give a single party an absolute majority in Parliament.