Greek Socialists Win in a Landslide

ATHENS — The Greek Socialist party won national elections here Sunday, trouncing a center-right government crippled by corruption scandals and a growing economic crisis.

With 65 percent of Greece’s 10 million votes counted, the Socialist Pasok party was leading with 43.7 percent of the vote compared with 34.6 percent for the center-right New Democracy party, a margin expected to give the Socialists their largest margin of victory ever and a comfortable majority in Parliament.

“Today we set off together to build the Greece we want and need. We have no time to waste,” Socialist leader George Papandreou said in his victory speech. “We want it, we can do it, we will succeed.”

“Nothing will be easy,” he added. “But I will always be honest and upfront with the Greeks.”

In conceding defeat, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said he had failed to convince Greeks to accept the two years of austerity measures he had called for to steer the country out of its economic crisis. “The voters did not approve of this policy. It was their choice, and I respect it,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/europe/05greece.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Good news at last.

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I was just getting ready to post:
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/04/greece-election-socialist_n_309085.html

<snip>
ATHENS, Greece — Greece's Socialists trounced the governing conservatives in a landslide election Sunday, with voters angered by scandals and a faltering economy ousting Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis halfway through his second term.

Humbled by his New Democracy party's worst electoral performance ever, Karamanlis, 53, resigned as its leader and said a new chief is needed for the party founded by his late uncle Constantine Karamanlis 35 years ago.

George Papandreou, 57, now follows in the footsteps of his father, Andreas Papandreou – who founded his Panhellenic Socialist Movement party, or PASOK – and grandfather and namesake George Papandreou, both of whom served several terms as prime ministers.

"We bear a great responsibility to change the course of the country. ... We know that we can make it," Papandreou, a former foreign minister, told jubilant supporters lighting flares and waving PASOK flags depicting the party's symbol of a green rising sun outside his party headquarters in central Athens.