Alexis Tsipras

A leadership change in the main opposition party, left-wing SYRIZA, will have to wait until the June 25 election, if at all.

Apart from the obvious, which is the complete triumph of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the devastating defeat of main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, the outcome of the May 21 election marked an important turning point in the country's history by signaling the end, once and for all, of the turbulent time that began in 2012.

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told his party's central committee on Thursday that he takes responsibility for the result of the May 21 elections. 

A caretaker government led by a judge and with non-politicians at the crucial posts will be sworn in Thursday.

Dora Antoniou, Kathimerini's political editor, joins Thanos Davelis to break down what went wrong for SYRIZA and Alexis Tsipras in Sunday's elections, what this defeat means for the party looking ahead, and whether this is now PASOK and Nikos Androulakis' big chance to reclaim the center-left. 

Following its disastrous showing in the May 21 election, where it lost more than 11 percentage points, main opposition SYRIZA is now talking about preventing Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party from becoming too powerful by clawing back some of the 20-percentage point gap separating the two big parties.

The system of simple proportional representation used in the May 21 elections was a wasteful, inconvenient and costly choice - a price we paid due to the opportunism of SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, which mirrored the opportunism of the late socialist leader Andreas Papandreou.

Nikos Androulakis, the socialist PASOK leader, has turned down the third exploratory mandate to form a government in a meeting with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

"I'm turning down the mandate I received, as there are no opportunities for government convergences on the basis of policy agreements," he said after the meeting.

SYRIZA's central committee will convene on Thursday following the main opposition's bruising performance in the general election.

A party announcement said the meeting at a central Athens hotel would begin with a speech by party leader Alexis Tsipras at 5 p.m.

Greek leftist leader Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday turned down a mandate to form a coalition government, saying he was preparing for a second election in June after what he called a "painful" electoral defeat for his SYRIZA party.