(TLN) Having learned only in early September that she would be replacing incumbent Eva Nassif as the Liberal Party’s candidate in Vimy, Annie Koutrakis won the election easily with more than 47 per cent voter support.
Bloc came second
While Vimy has nearly 88,000 registered voters, just over 55,000 (62.58 per cent) got out to vote. Koutrakis finished with 10,779 more votes than her nearest adversary, Claire-Emmanuelle Beaulieu of the Bloc Québécois who finished with almost 28 per cent support.
Finishing third was Conservative candidate Rima El-Helou with 10.8 per cent of the overall votes, followed by Vassif Aliev of the NDP with 8.6 per cent.
Dream comes true
Trailing behind her were the Green Party’s Faiza R’Guiba with 3.8 per cent and People’s Party of Canada candidate Suzanne Brunelle with 1.3 per cent.
“This is like an impossible dream since I didn’t even know two months ago that I would be the candidate, much the less that I would win,” Koutrakis, former president of the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal, said following her victory. “We worked very hard over the three weeks of intensive campaigning.”
Restates priorities
As she stated while campaigning, Koutrakis said her priorities during the upcoming term will be seeing to the well-being of senior citizens, young families from the middle-class and the ability of local organizations and community groups to continue serving the people of her riding.
In the 2015 elections, Eva Nassif won with 46.15 per cent support, followed by the NDP’s France Duhamel with 20.96 per cent, the Bloc Québécois’s Barek Khadouri with 16.69 per cent and the Conservatives’ Anthony Mavros with 13.36 per cent.
