This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/europe/greek-premier-presidential-elections.html

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
Greek Premier Moves Forward With Call to Speed Up Presidential Elections Greek Premier Moves Forward With Call to Speed Up Presidential Elections
(about 3 hours later)
ATHENS — Amid mounting political uncertainty and nervousness in the financial markets, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece pressed ahead on Tuesday with an acceleration of the timetable for the presidential election, a gamble that puts his government on the line and provides an opening for a leftist opposition party that opposes the terms of Greece’s international bailout. In deciding this week to accelerate the selection of a new president, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece has sent the country hurtling toward a fateful decision: whether to ratify his grip on power or open the door to a fundamental rethinking of the austerity policies that have defined life in the economically depressed nation for five years.
Mr. Samaras said his coalition’s presidential candidate for the election, whose first round will be held next week, would be Stavros Dimas, a former European Union commissioner and a fellow conservative. Mr. Samaras’s call for the Parliament to elect a new president — a largely ceremonial post — amounts to seeking a vote of confidence in his center-right government that will play out between now and the end of the year. If it succeeds, he will retain the backing he needs to continue working with the lenders that have helped keep Greece afloat, and do so before having to negotiate further budget cutbacks.
The decision to move forward presidential elections scheduled for February came a few hours after euro zone finance ministers granted Greece a two-month extension to the European part of a joint bailout program with the International Monetary Fund worth a total of 240 billion euros, or $297 billion. The move potentially paves the way for a credit line next year to keep the country afloat if it cannot tap international markets. If it fails, it could trigger national elections early next year, giving the left-wing Syriza opposition party, which at this point is leading in the polls, a chance to take over and make good on its promises to steer Greece away from austerity.
Mr. Samaras said the aim of the election was to remove public uncertainty and restore political stability. The maneuvering elicited a spasm of anxiety from the financial markets and watchful concern from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, which together have negotiated the terms of Greece’s bailout and domestic economic policies since the financial crisis erupted in 2010.
“With the election of a new president, Greece — now absolutely stable economically and politically — will be ready in every way to proceed to the day after, to calmness, stability and growth,” he said in a televised address on Tuesday. In moving up the vote for a Greek president, Mr. Samaras is gambling that an earlier election will help him secure the 180 parliamentary votes, out of 300 seats, he needs to hold on to power for another year and a half.
Mr. Samaras said the decision to extend Greece’s bailout “shows that in Europe, too, there is the realization that Greece is turning a page.” His announcement late on Monday came just hours after eurozone ministers approved a two-month extension on the current Greek bailout program, allowing Mr. Samaras to seek the votes he needs for the presidency ahead of any new, no doubt painful agreement with Greece’s creditors. The selection of the new president had originally been anticipated to take place in February.
But Greece’s creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — remain concerned about political instability, and their negotiations on economic policy with the current government have stalled. In announcing his decision, Mr. Samaras said the aim of the election was to restore political stability.
In the event of early general elections, the country’s leftist opposition party Syriza is positioned to perform strongly, according to opinion polls. And, despite moderating his radical image, the Syriza leader, Alexis Tsipras, still wants to break from austerity policies that have dominated Greece for four years and to restructure the country’s huge debt burden, which stands at 174 percent of gross domestic product. But Mr. Samaras’s decision rattled the Athens stock market, which closed down 12.78 percent, the biggest plunge since 1987. Bank shares were down 16.6 and 10-year bond yields rose above 8 percent, a level that effectively blocks Greece from raising money in the markets.
The move jolted the Athens Stock Exchange, which closed down 12.78 percent, the biggest plunge since 1987. Bank shares were down 16.6 percent, and 10-year bond yields soared to 7.86 percent, a level that effectively blocks Greece from raising capital in the markets. Under the Greek constitution, if the Parliament cannot chose a president after three rounds of voting and at least a three-fifths majority, then it must be dissolved and a new general election held. Right now, most analysts believe that Mr. Samaras is short about 25 votes of the 180 votes necessary in the third round.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Tsipras claimed that Mr. Samaras had not chosen to reschedule elections but had been forced to because the “government’s policies led to a deadlock.” “The advantage to holding the decision now is that he does not have to agree to further austerity measures which will hurt his popularity further and would make it that much harder for anyone to cross the divide and vote with him,” said Nick Malkoutzis, the founder and editor of MacroPolis, the political analysis website.
He appeared confident that presidential elections would produce an impasse and that snap general elections would be held, leading to a “government of national salvation with Syriza at its core,” suggesting that the leftists could form a coalition with other parties. But Mr. Malkoutzis and many other analysts said they believed it would still be very difficult for Mr. Samaras, who is holding on to an extremely thin majority in Parliament. The prime minister nominated Stavros Dimas for the job, a 73-year-old former member of the European Commission and fellow conservative.
“At last today we know the date, Dec. 29, when the disastrous term of the government of the memorandum will end,” he said, referring to the country’s loan agreement with creditors, which came attached with onerous austerity measures that have slashed household incomes by a third and pushed unemployment up to 26 percent. Some analysts speculated that Mr. Samaras would not have made his move if he did not have the votes. But others thought they were simply watching desperation.
The role of president in Greece is largely ceremonial, but if lawmakers cannot approve a candidate, a snap general election must be held, according to the Constitution. The first round of presidential voting is to be held Dec. 17, with two more rounds expected to follow on Dec. 23 and 29. If a new general election is held, polls suggest that Mr. Samaras’s party, New Democracy, would come in behind Syriza, though many pollsters say that there are still a large number of undecided voters.
Mr. Samaras’s coalition, which controls 155 seats in the 300-member Parliament, cannot garner the 200 seats necessary to approve its candidate in the first and second rounds and will struggle to amass the 180 votes needed in the final vote. Lawmakers participate in the votes, which are held by roll call in Parliament. The head of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, has the political advantage of having had no part in the bailout agreements that have forced the government to raise taxes, cut pensions and lay off thousands of workers. Although he has long been critical of the austerity forced on Greece by Germany and other lenders, he has worked hard to moderate his image as a radical in recent months, trying to ensure investors and voters that he can be trusted with power.
Despite the huge gamble, Mr. Samaras appeared confident of his government’s chances. He described Mr. Dimas as a “person respected by Greek society but also by the international community” who “unites citizens beyond their political preferences.” But he has said repeatedly that he wants to break from austerity policies and restructure the government’s huge debt burden, which stands at 174 percent of gross domestic product.
There are serious doubts, however, that any candidate proposed by the coalition would gain adequate support from opposition lawmakers to avert general elections. Panos Skourletis, spokesman for Syriza, said he did not believe Mr. Samaras would get the necessary votes. The government, he said, moved up the election so it would not have to “deal with disclosing the commitments they have towards the troika and the underpinnings of the new credit-line deal.”
But what was important, he said was that that after the new elections, “Europe has to rethink its strategy against the crisis. If they don’t, they are risking not only Greece’s future but Europe’s as a whole, both financially and for the very cohesion.”
Ever since Syriza won the European Parliamentary elections in Greece last spring, Mr. Samaras has tried to distance himself from austerity measures and offer Greeks a new, more hopeful narrative.
Some say that he overplayed his hand when he suggested that Greece would exit its bailout program at the end of the year, triggering the a stock market plunge in October.
But he was back on television in November to announce that the economy had grown 1.7 percent in the third quarter of this year.
“We promised you that the country would exit the tunnel of the great recession,” he said. “This is now reality.”
His 2015 budget, recently adopted by Parliament, contains several optimistic forecasts that Greece’s creditors are disputing. He has also given citizens some respite from heavy taxes, by offering them the ability to pay in small increments over a long period of time.
“When the current Parliament elects a president at the end of the month the clouds will be gone,” he said “and the country will be ready to officially enter the post-bailout era.”
Since 2010 Greece has received almost $296 billion in rescue funds. But recent negotiations over the next installment and a new line of credit that can be tapped in an emergency in the future have stalled, with Mr. Samaras complaining that the government won’t accept any “irrational and unjustifiable” proposals.
Takis Chatzis, a political analyst and publisher of newpost.gr, said he believed that Mr. Samaras had chosen a risky route, and was unlikely to find the votes he needed.
“My reading of the situation is that we will have an unbelievably polarized situation,” he said, " and that is dangerous for the country.”