ATHENS, July 17 — Greece’s parliament will be sworn in today after July 7 elections that saw a broad conservative victory end over four years of leftist rule.
New Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ new conservative government has made boosting sluggish growth a priority, powered by tax cuts and accompanied by privatisation deals.
Mitsotakis will outline his government’s policies at the weekend before a vote of confidence is held late on Sunday.
His New Democracy party has 158 lawmakers in the 300-seat chamber.
Yesterday, Athens placed seven-year bonds at a record-low yield in its first foray into the debt markets since the election.
The Greek debt agency said it had raised €2.5 billion (RM11.5 billion) in the sale, adding that final offers were in excess of €13 billion.
The government said the yield of 1.9 per cent was a “record low”.
There are two fewer parties than the previous parliament, but two of them are new — Greek Solution, a nationalist party formed by TV salesman Kyriakos Velopoulos, and MeRA25, an anti-austerity party founded by maverick economist and Tsipras’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
In contrast, Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was shut out of parliament for the first time since 2012.
Golden Dawn, until recently Greece’s third-ranking party, is in disarray amid an ongoing trial for the 2013 murder of an anti-fascist rapper, allegedly carried out with the knowledge of senior Golden Dawn members. — AFP
