Tsipras: I initially considered resigning after May 21 elex

SYRIZA leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday evening said he initially considered resigning from the party’s helm in the wake of a catastrophic showing by the leftist party (20.1 percent) in the May 21 election, while adding “I didn’t have the right to desert”.

Speaking during his first interview on a prime-time newscast since SYRIZA’s poor electoral showing, Tsipras said the goal for a second election on June 25 is to “prevent the dominance of Kyriakos Mitsotakis”, a reference to the incumbent prime minster, whose center-right New Democracy (ND) came in first with 40.8 percent of the vote. The latter figure, however, wasn’t enough to form a majority government, as the electoral law, as voted by a previous SYRIZA government, was simple proportional.
“I won’t hide; I thought about resigning, and this tormented me not only for hours, but for the first few days. However, after the shock I realized that the only thing I don’t have the right to do right is desert. I didn’t have the right to abandon 1.2 million voters who trusted us, and SYRIZA supporters, in a difficult moment,” he said, in fielding questions on the Athens-based Star Channel’s newscast.
“If these (election) results are repeated, we’ll have a mismatch and an unbridled government. It will be painful for democracy to deal with an all-powerful government; imagine an unrestrained Mitsotakis, what else will he do in terms of wiretapping or constitutional revision?” he asked, rhetorically.