ATHENS, Greece—Greeks have elected Alexis Tsipras prime minister for the second time this year but with a strikingly different mandate: Instead of the vehemently anti-austerity platform he espoused in January, he has now agreed to implement yet more stringent spending cuts and tax hikes.
The 41-year-old left-wing leader, who was sworn into office on Sept. 21, pulled off the remarkable gamble he took when he resigned in August, barely seven months into his four-year term, triggering elections to face down a rebellion within his Syriza party over his policy U-turn in accepting more austerity in return for a third bailout for Greece.
But now he must implement deeply unpopular measures of the sort he made his political career railing against.
Tsipras was re-forming his previous government with his former coalition partner, the small right-wing populist Independent Greeks who narrowly made it into Parliament in seventh place in Sunday’s election. Their administration, to be announced on Tuesday, will have a narrow majority of 155 seats in the 300-member legislature.
Crucially, however, Tsipras no longer has to worry about the hard left radicals within his own party who triggered his previous government’s demise by voting against him on Greece’s bailout, costing him his parliamentary majority. The new anti-bailout party they formed did worse than they expected on Sunday, failing to win any parliamentary seats.
