ATHENS: Greece’s parliament will be sworn in Wednesday 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.
On Tuesday, 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 euros (RM 11.5 billion) in the sale, adding that final offers were in excess of 13 billion euros (RM 60 billion).
The government said the yield of 1.9% 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
