New Democracy-backed Costas Bakoyannis handily defeated ruling SYRIZA party’s candidate, Nasos Iliopoulos, in the Athens mayoral race during the second round of local government elections across the country on Sunday, polling 65.2 percent to the latter’s 34.75 percent, and with nearly 99 percent of the vote counted.
Bakoyannis, the son of former ND minister Dora Bakoyannis and nephew of ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, moved from the Sterea Ellada (south-central Greece) governor’s seat to the Athens town hall. Voter turnout failed to reach 34 percent.
In the all important Attica regional government race, another ND-backed candidate, Giorgos Patoulis, easily defeated incumbent Rena Dourou, a high-profile SYRIZA cadre. Patoulis, the outgoing mayor of Maroussi, in northern Athens, garnered 65.78 percent of the vote to Dourou’s 34.22 percent.
An upset was reported in northern Thessaloniki, where Konstantinos Zervas handily defeated Nikos Tahiaos in the second round, 66.76 percent to 33.24 percent, overturning the results of the first round.
Meanwhile, in the port city of Piraeus, also in the greater Athens area, Yannis Moralis was re-elected with 57.84 percent of the vote in the second round. Morallis was backed by the Kinima/PASOK formation, but also enjoyed support from some local ND office-holders.
Finally, the Communist Party-backed incumbent in the western port city of Patras, Costas Peletidis, won the second round in a landslide on Sunday, with 70.42 percent of the vote, one of only a handful of first-place showing for the party in the country.
