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Greek leftist Alexis Tsipras made a last call on Sunday for weary voters to return him to power in a close-fought election, after a tumultuous year that saw him cave in to European demands for austerity to keep the country afloat.
Both Tsipras and his conservative rival Vangelis Meimarakis, vying to take on the daunting task of steering the country through a refugee crisis as well as painful economic reforms, called for a high turnout as they cast their ballots in an election polls suggest is too close to call.
It is the third time Greeks are voting this year, after an election that catapulted Tsipras and his Syriza party to power and a referendum in which voters backed him to spurn the terms of a bailout — only for him to agree to it anyway.
It is also the fifth general election in six years.
With many voters disillusioned and exhausted and the major parties in broad agreement about the bailout there were some signs that turnout might be comparatively light.
Mammoth challengeTsipras was voted into office in January promising to halt austerity measures imposed by Europe, which most Greeks blame for worsening one of the deepest depressions of any industrialised country in modern times.
After banks were shut for weeks and the country pushed to the wall, he effectively reversed himself in August to accept the bailout, splitting his leftist coalition and being forced to call a new vote.
Tsipras’ estranged ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who infuriated Greece’s international creditors by refusing to go along with their demands for austerity, dismissed Sunday’s election as an attempt to “to nullify” the wishes of Greeks.
Smiling broadly as he voted in a schoolroom in a working-class suburb of Athens, Tsipras urged his fellow citizens to usher in a new era and “give a mandate for a strong government with a four-year horizon, which is what the country needs.”
Final polls on Friday gave a slight edge to Syriza over Meimarakis’s New Democracy, but the difference was small and neither party looked in a position to secure the 38 per cent or so that should offer a majority of seats.
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