A New Day for New Democracy Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party, was sworn in as the new Greek prime minister on July 8 after his party won the country's general election. New Democracy received roughly 40 percent of the vote in the July 7 contest, securing 158 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament — thereby ending the left-wing Syriza party's four and a half years in power. Mitsotakis has promised to cut taxes, increase flexibility in the labor market and turn Greece into an overall more attractive destination for foreign investors. Markets have thus unsurprisingly welcomed his victory, with the Greek stock exchange's general index ticking up and the interest rates on Greek debt ticking down.