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Alexis Tsipras, former prime minister of Greece, has announced that he has resigned as leader of Syriza, the country’s main left-wing party of which he was one of the founders and which he has led since 2009.
Tsipras explained that he made the decision due to the disappointing result in the recent general elections won by New Democracy, the centre-right party of outgoing prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. New Democracy obtained 40.56 percent of the vote, and 158 seats in parliament, while Syriza stopped at 17.84 percent, and 47 seats: a worse result than in the first round of elections on May 21, when Syriza he had obtained 20.07 percent of the vote.
Tsipras is 48 years old and was prime minister between 2015 and 2019, at the height of years of a very serious economic crisis that had hit Greece. In 2015 he had promised the Greeks an end to the austerity measures and the renegotiation of the conditions imposed on the country by its creditors, but during his mandate he had shown a certain pragmatism by giving in to pressure from creditors and ending up accepting an international loan on almost as difficult as the previous ones. Later Tsipras had also dismissed the then Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis from his government, opposed to any compromise with creditors and who had then founded a new party.
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