Emerging from the presidential mansion after turning down the second exploratory mandate to form a government on Tuesday, main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance leader Alexis Tsipras personally accepted responsibility for the party's poor showing in the elections on Sunday, which he described as an "unexpected painful shock".
He said that SYRIZA's focus at this time will be on averting a repetition of this result, which would deliver an "all-powerful and uncontrollable, hegemonic and arrogant government" in the elections on June 25.
"A significant opportunity for a change in the way the country is governed, with simple proportional representation, was lost - I think it was lost before the elections - so I had no reason to keep the mandate," he said.
He also expressed fears that the result will prove painful for society as a whole "creating correlations which, if they are repeated in the next elections of enhanced proportional representation will create conditions that are suffocating for democracy" and deliver absolute power "to a government whose behaviour in its first four years showed that it does not respect the rule of law, or democracy, or pluralism."
Regarding SYRIZA's defeat, he said he fully assumed responsibility "but in my moral vocabulary...this means standing and fighting" while he apologised "to those he had let down" and invited them to fight to prevent ND's dominance and "for the Left, SYRIZA, to remain the basic core and expressor of popular struggles and demands."
