Tsipras cabinet by tomorrow

The 49 percent abstention rate, which is the highest since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, certainly helped to secure Syriza’s clear win, yet was not enough to secure a single-party regime.

Mr Tsipras will once again form a coalition government with the small nationalist Independent Greeks (ANEL) party. “Under complex conditions, the Greek people have given us a clear order to get rid of everything in that kept us stuck in the past”, Tsipras told supporters in central Athens.

In January, Syriza won the general elections with 36.34 percent of the vote, followed by the New Democracy bloc at 27.81 percent.

“Democracy won’t be blackmailed”, Tsipras said on a televised address to Greece after results to the 5 July referendum were declared, and added that Greeks had made a “very courageous choice”.

The most recent bailout program allocated to Greece was worth about 86 billion pounds.

Greece’s newly-appointed Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to announce his government’s cabinet later on Tuesday, with the top positions probably remaining in the hands of the same ministers.

“This offer applies both to jointly overcoming the debt crisis and to the challenges posed by the refugee situation, for which we need common answers”, he said. Turnout was said to be low. But rebels, who formed a breakaway party pledging to take Greece out of the eurozone, failed to get elected to parliament.

In an attempt to reduce the country’s huge debt, Tsipras has agreed to raise taxes, make changes to pension agreements and make welfare cuts, coupled with the liberalization of consumer markets and the implementation of labor market reforms. These austerity programs have had a devastating effect on the Greek economy and on the living standards of ordinary Greek working people.

A Syriza MEP says he hopes the party can “move forward” after they pulled off a second election victory in a year.

According to an official from the Syriza party, Tsipras’ first priority will be to stabilise banks. By doing so, Tsipras effectively abandoned his previous pledge to bring the austerity that Greece has endured for years to an end. The European Commission yesterday urged Syriza to press on with reforms.

Analysts see risks that the reforms demanded under the €86bn bailout programme will not be fully implemented due to their unpopularity among Greek voters and within Syriza itself.