Alexis Tsipras-led Syriza party won Greece elections

Voting has ended in Greece and a key exit poll shows the leftist party of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras leading its main conservative rival.

“Under hard conditions, the Greek people have given us a clear order to get rid of everything that kept us stuck in the past”, Tsipras told supporters in central Athens.

“We now have to do our homework so that Greece becomes a well ordered state, to fight corruption and vested interests”, Kretsos, who is also the Greek government’s general secretary of communications, said in a telephone interview.

Mr Tsipras’s party regards New Democracy as part of the old establishment responsible for the country’s economic woes which “piled debts on Greeks”.

“The electoral result appears to be concluding with Syriza and Mr. Tspiras in the lead. I congratulate him and urge him to create the government which is needed”, New Democracy’s leader Vangelis Meimarakiis said.

On the other side of the Greek capital New Democracy voters were less than confident Tsipras will deliver stability and expressed fears that his actions will worsen one of the worst depressions to hit an industrialised country in modern times.

Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis quit Syriza after July’s bailout referendum, having been earlier pulled by Mr Tsipras from the country’s bailout negotiating team.

After marathon negotiations with Greece’s worldwide creditors, the global Monetary Fund and European Union , under the dark shadow of an imminent default and Grexit, the SYRIZA-ANEL administration sealed the country’s third tough bailout in five years. Mr Tsipras had been expected to form a more broadly-based coalition with two small centre-left parties, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and To Potami (The River), which won 17 and 10 seats respectively.

Greek voters- the ones that did vote- chose to give SYRIZA another chance rather than opting for New Democracy, a solid right party.

With 99.5 percent of the votes counted, Syriza emerged as the big victor with 35.47 percent.

Alexis Tsipras’s popularity plummeted when he agreed to a deal with European leaders implementing more austerity measures – in contrast to his anti-austerity campaigning ahead of the last election. Greece’s neo-fascist party Golden Dawn gained a seat – with 7 percent of the votes and 18 seats it will be the third largest party in the 300-seat parliament. Many Greeks are unhappy that he acquiesced to greater belt-tightening after coming to power in January on an expressly anti-austerity platform.

But the move alienated many Syriza supporters and split the party, with a fifth of its anti-euro hardline MPs walking out, forcing Tsipras to call Greece’s fifth general election in six years.

The agreement came amid threats to expel Greece from the euro if it continued to reject creditors’ demands and was a major about-face for Tsipras.