PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement), Greece’s opposition socialist party, has won the country’s general election – ending a 6-year rule by New Democracy.
With 99% of votes counted, Pasok had nearly 44% of the vote, to 33.5% for New Democracy – its worst ever result.
Pasok needed 43% to win an absolute majority in parliament. It has been in opposition for more than five years.
Quoted from BBC News
In fact, the defeat has lead to the immediate resignation of outgoing prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis. The 53 year became president of New Democracy in March 1997, and became the Greek prime minister in 2004.
He is the nephew of former Greek leader, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who has been leader of Greece on and off between 1955 and 1995.
So… what about the new prime minister of Greece? That will be George Papandreou:
Mr Papandreou has been leader of the Pan Hellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) since February 2004, and led the party to defeat in the general elections of that year and 2007 before winning in October 2009. He was elected on a programme of stimulating the economy, promoting green policies and combating corruption in public life.
The son and grandson of prime ministers, he was foreign minister in the previous Pasok government in 1999-2004. As deputy foreign minister in 1997 he had ministerial responsibility for Greece’s successful bid to host the 2004 Olympics.
Mr Papandreou was born in the United States, where his father was a college lecturer, and educated there and in Canada, Sweden and Britain as a sociologist before returning with his father to Greece after the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.
Quoted from Greece Country Profile
(BBC News)
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