Former minister Fofi Gennimata was elected as the new president of the socialist PASOK party, a once dominant political force in the country that held power for more than two decades after the restoration of democracy in 1974.

Gennimata, the daughter of a late PASOK icon, Georgios Gennimatas, bested veteran politician and minister Andreas Loverdos and outsider Odysseas Konstantopoulos, a new generation PASOK cadre.

Some 65,000 people voted in the internal party election, with Gennimata picking up 50 percent of the vote. She received congratulations afterwards by outgoing president Evangelos Venizelos and her two rivals.