The right-wing Greek Solution party gained six more seats since the last Parliament, party leader Kyriakos Velopoulos said in Thessaloniki on Sunday after official election results were confirmed by Singular Logic and the Interior Ministry.
"We went through fire and emerged unscathed," he said in a statement.
The party leader added that "the system today and until yesterday had done its best so that Greek Solution stays out of Parliament. From 10 deputies, we reached 16."
He thanked the voters, disparaged the polling companies, and said that his party "did not betray anyone; we are the only patriotic Greek party, proved it, and will continue to prove it on a daily basis."
Meanwhile, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Dimitris Koutsoubas, said on Sunday night that the electoral results and the party's political influence in specific zones of Greece "are hopeful messages" for the future.
He noted that KKE gained in significant urban centres, working-class neighbourhoods of large cities, and in regions where a great part of the industrial and labour forces were concentrated, such as in Attica.
Koutsoubas accused ruling New Democracy (ND), main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, and PASOK-KINAL of convergence in their basic strategic policies, and accused Syriza in particular of turning people to conservatism, fueling ND's dominance.
He also charged that having runoff elections "was not because a government cannot be formed, but because they want to distort the people's vote" based on the new electoral law, which will go into effect with the second election round (and award extra seats to the first party).
"Therefore, in this case, we must prepare for an even greater boosting of KKE at possible new elections, since their anti-popular agenda is more than certain."
KKE will utilise the power people gave it to organize popular resistance within Parliament and outside it, Koutsoubas stressed.
Sunday's national elections in Greece resulted in a sweeping victory for ruling New Democracy and unexpected low results for main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, which lost all but one of 59 electoral regions in Greece.
With 95/50% of the votes counted, the following percentages were recorded, according to the Interior Ministry's live update through its online site (https://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/v/home/en/), with party leaders in parentheses:
- New Democracy (Kyriakos Mitsotakis): 40.78% and 145 seats
- SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance (Alexis Tsipras): 20.07% and 72 seats
- PASOK-KINAL (Nikos Androulakis): 11.53% and 41 seats
- Communist Party of Greece (Dimitris Koutsoubas): 7.20% and 26 seats
- Greek Solution (Kyriakos Velopoulos): 4.46% and 16 seats
Yanis Varoufakis' party MeRA25 with 2.59% did not make the 3% threshold to enter Parliament, along with Niki (Dimitris Natsios, 2.92%) and Plefsi Eleftherias (Zoi Konstantopoulou, former Parliament speaker, 2.87%).
Voter turnout was 60.73%, parties that did not make it into Parliament account for 15.96% of votes, and invalid or blank votes totaled 2.61%.
READ MORE: Varoufakis blames SYRIZA for losing seat in Parliament and the "unbelievable" wave of conservatism.
