Greek voters give crushing victory to anti-austerity party (LIVE BLOG)

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A quick snapshot of election results

What's next for Greece?

GlobalPost's Paul Ames reports from Lisbon, Portugal:

"Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity," newly elected Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told a cheering crowd in Athens on Sunday night.

"It leaves behind five years of humiliation and anguish.”

It's easy to understand why Greek voters gave Tsipras and his Coalition of the Radical Left party, also-known-as SYRIZA, such an emphatic victory in Sunday's election.

Their country has been the epicenter of the euro-zone's debt crisis since 2009. Since then, Greeks have seen their economy shrink by a quarter.

Public services have crumbled, living standards plummeted, unemployment and poverty rates hit record levels.

Voters blame governments of the established conservative and center-left parties: first for creating the economic mess by secretly running up massive budget deficits and debt levels; then prolonging the agony through slavish adherence to austerity diktats imposed by the euro zone powers in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin.

SYRIZA campaigned on an offer of hope.

A look back 

Al Jazeera's Europe correspondent Barnaby Phillips shares some defining movements in Greece's economic crisis.

"Five long years of humiliation and pain are over, if we believe Alexis Tsipras," Phillips writes. "Nobody should underestimate the turmoil Greek society has been through in recent years."

'We, the poor, remain in the same situation'

Wall Street flat after leftists win Greek elections

Reuters — US stocks were little changed on Monday after a decisive Greek election victory by the Syriza party spurred concern over fresh instability in the euro zone, even as the possibility of Greece leaving the bloc was considered remote.

While the United States has limited direct exposure to Greece's relatively small economy, extended volatility in the region could hurt multinational companies. If the euro continues to weaken against the dollar, that could be a headwind for earnings.

For Russia, Syriza win comes in handy

GlobalPost's Dan Peleschuk reports from Kyiv, Ukraine:

With much of Europe looking at Greece with anxiety, there’s at least one leader who isn’t panicking too much: Vladimir Putin.

The leftist Syriza coalition’s victory in Sunday’s Greek vote is spreading worries for some of further financial turmoil in Europe, and hope for others of an anti-austerity uprising.

But it also means the Russian president, who’s become increasingly isolated on the world stage, thanks to Russia’s meddling in the Ukraine crisis, may have just won a new friend.

First, Russia’s close historical, cultural and religious ties with Greece — both countries are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian — go way back.

But then there’s the politics: While Syriza members have tried to allay fears the radical leftist coalition would seek to pull Greece out of NATO, they do openly challenge the military alliance’s utility and importance.

That’s key because the Kremlin isn’t exactly NATO’s biggest fan either. (Putin himself on Monday even slammed Ukraine’s army as a “NATO legion” serving foreign geopolitical interests.)

But perhaps even more important is speculation that Syriza may help block crippling European Union sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, measures the radical Greeks have repeatedly criticized.

The party leadership has also spoken out against Kyiv’s new pro-EU government, which the Kremlin slams as a “fascist junta.” All 28 EU member states must vote unanimously to extend the punitive measures when they’re up for renewal in July.

The trickle-down effects of sanctions — such as a drop in Russian tourism to Greece — have been felt by Athens, Bloomberg News reported.

It’s unclear just how closely Syriza will pivot toward Russia. But hints are emerging. 

Costas Isychos, the coalition’s foreign policy chief, told the official Russian newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta, on Sunday that one of newly minted Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ first foreign visits might just be to Moscow.

“We should remember that the relationship between our countries is much deeper than just the current agenda of the day,” he said.

The divisiveness of the euro

"Austerity, in other words, isn't what Europe deserves blame for in Greece," writes The Washington Post's Matt O'Brien. "Hard money is."

Reactions from UK's political parties 

GlobalPost's Corinne Purtill reports from London, UK:

With 101 days to go before the UK’s own general election on May 7, political classes here used news of Syriza’s victory in Greece to reinforce their own economic arguments.

To the ruling Conservative party, news of an anti-austerity party upset can’t be reassuring. The Tories introduced a program of public spending cuts almost immediately after taking power in 2010, pointing to the collapsing Greek economy as a dire omen of Britain's own fortunes.

While the cuts were initially sold as temporary, in 2013 Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that austerity was here to stay.

He refrained from directly criticizing Syriza, but warned against an anti-austerity uprising.

Chancellor and austerity champion George Osborne told the BBC that Syriza’s promises were “very difficult to deliver and incompatible with what the euro zone currently demands of its members.”

Some observers are interpreting this as a heavy hint that Syriza’s victory could force Greece’s exit from the euro zone. There is a lot of interest here in the success of an upstart party.

Membership in the so-called third parties — those not Labour or Conservative — has skyrocketed in recent months.

Among them is the left-wing Green Party, whose platform includes a similar rejection of austerity. Though just one Green lawmaker currently sits in Parliament, its membership recently reached its highest-ever levels, with roughly 10 percent of the electorate. That's not enough to sweep them to power, but it could help shake up Britain's political balance, which is shakier than it’s ever been this close to a general election.

Natalie Bennett, the Greens’ leader in England and Wales, tweeted:

Green leaders and supporters welcomed Syriza’s victory as an encouraging sign for their own chances in May. The Greek Green Party is part of the Syriza coalition (the party’s name is the Greek acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left.)

“Challenging business-as-usual politics can win the support of the people,” UK Green Party spokesperson and European Parliament member Molly Scott Cato said, noting the “green surge.” “We hope the Greek election result marks the beginnings of ordinary people standing up to a discredited economic model and failing Governments across Europe.” 

No concessions from euro zone on Greece's bailout

Fearing the rise of other anti-austerity movements, European officials insisted that they won't soften terms of Greece's bailout, The Wall Street Journal reports:

Asked in Brussels whether Greece could expect more leniency from the eurozone, the head of the currency’s bloc’s conference of finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, was blunt: “I don’t think there is a lot of support for that in the eurozone,” he said.

It's official

Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is sworn in as Greece's new prime minister at the Presidential Palace in Athens.

If Greece's economy falls apart, can the EU handle it?

GlobalPost's Paul Ames weighs in:

Since the crisis erupted in 2009, the EU has set in place an architecture of bailout mechanisms, stability provisions and alert procedures to better hold the euro zone together and ring-fence problems in any one member. 

The other weaker links from the darkest days of the crisis are showing encouraging signals.

Spain just saw its first rise in employment since 2007; growing confidence in Portugal was marked by a whopping 34.8 percent increase in new car sales last year; Ireland is forecast to be the euro zone's fastest growing economy this year with a healthy 3.6 percent.

They have been relatively untouched by market jitters over Greece. "The euro area is now significantly far more robust," Benoit Coeure, a European Central Bank executive board member, told Germany's Die Welt newspaper. "The risks of contagion that might emanate from the Greek financial market are significantly lower today."

Yet much fragility remains and a Greek default or exit could rock the euro zone's foundations.

Recovery in periphery nations remains tentative. At the core, Germany is slowing, and France and Italy face stagnation.

Prices are falling in most euro zone countries. Fears deflation could drag the bloc into a long-term circle of decline are expected to force the European Central Bank to launch a controversial program Thursday reportedly worth €550 billion ($638 billion) to buy up government bonds in an effort to pump fresh money into the economy. 

Experts are divided on whether that will do the trick. A major shock from Greece would certainly not help.

What does the new leadership mean for Greece's economy?

Reuters — Greek leftwing leader Alexis Tsipras struck a deal with a right-wing party to form a government to confront international lenders and reverse years of painful austerity following a crushing election victory by his Syriza party.

The success of the anti-bailout party reignites fears of new financial troubles in the country that set off the regional crisis in 2009.

It is also the first time a member of the 19-nation euro zone will be led by a party rejecting German-backed austerity, emboldening anti-austerity movements elsewhere.

Fresh from trouncing conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on a campaign of "Hope is coming!" the 40-year-old Tsipras quickly sealed a deal on a coalition with the head of the small Independent Greeks party which, like Syriza, opposes Greece's bailout deal.

A deal with the right-wing party makes an unusual alliance between parties on the opposite end of the political spectrum but brought together by a mutual hatred for the EU/IMF bailout program keeping Greece afloat.

Reaction from financial markets to Syriza's victory was largely muted, with the euro recovering from a tumble to a 11-year low against the dollar on initial results. Greek stocks dipped slightly while 10-year bond yields rose.

With almost all votes counted, Syriza won 149 seats in the 300-seat parliament, two short of an absolute majority. But the result marked a comprehensive rejection of the years of austerity demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in return for the 240 billion-euro bailout.

Syriza's campaign of hope resonated with voters worn down by huge budget cuts and heavy tax rises during the years of crisis that have sent unemployment over 25 percent and pushed millions into poverty.

Tspiras will be creating the first euro zone government elected to undo the orthodox conservative polices of strict budgetary rigor that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has championed for the bloc's most troubled economies although he has not laid out what his first moves in office would be.