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| Greece Heading to Early Elections After Presidential Vote Fails | Greece Heading to Early Elections After Presidential Vote Fails |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| ATHENS — Greece’s Parliament failed to elect a new president on Monday in the final round of a three-stage vote, paving the way for early general elections that could open the door to a leftist party that opposes the terms of the country’s international bailouts. | ATHENS — Greece’s Parliament failed to elect a new president on Monday in the final round of a three-stage vote, paving the way for early general elections that could open the door to a leftist party that opposes the terms of the country’s international bailouts. |
| The coalition’s candidate, Stavros Dimas, a former European commissioner, garnered 168 votes in the 300-seat house, 12 short of the minimum threshold of 180 votes, with 132 voting against. | |
| Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he would visit President Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday and ask him to dissolve Parliament immediately so that early elections could be held on Jan. 25. | |
| “The country has no time to lose,” he said. “We did what we could to elect a president and avert early elections and the dangers they entail,” he said. “Now, what Parliament failed to do, the people must do.” | |
| The new political upheaval in Greece has not set off a sense of panic like that felt across the eurozone in 2012, when it seemed possible that the country could abandon the common currency and shake the bloc of countries that share it. | |
| The prospect of elections has unsettled international markets and Greece’s creditors, however, because the leftist party Syriza, which has pledged to renegotiate the country’s international bailouts and to seek a write-down of Greece’s huge debt, is expected to win. | |
| Opinion polls show the leftists firmly ahead of Mr. Samaras’s conservative New Democracy party, although Syriza’s lead has narrowed in recent weeks as the prospect of protracted political and financial uncertainty has grown. The Athens Stock Exchange fell by 10 percent during the vote. | |
| In an interview with state television over the weekend, Mr. Samaras pushed opposition legislators to align with the government in Monday’s vote, saying that failing to elect a president would be “political blackmail” and result in “pointless upheaval” for the country. | |
| Despite furious lobbying by the government, Mr. Dimas received only 168 votes, the same as in the second ballot last week and eight more than in the first vote on Dec. 17. | |
| Mr. Samaras accused Syriza of “foolish bravado,” adding that the leftists’ economic program was “full of unilateral moves” that would upset Greece’s creditors and jeopardize the country’s fragile return to growth. | |
| Mr. Samaras’s coalition government is working with the so-called troika of lenders, which has granted Greece two bailouts worth 240 billion euros, or about $292 billion, since 2010 to keep the country liquid. In return, the troika has demanded an array of austerity measures that have slashed household incomes by a third and pushed unemployment above 25 percent. | |
| Negotiations with the members of the troika —the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — on a tough economic program have been dragging amid rising opposition in Greece to austerity. But eurozone officials have expressed their readiness to extend Greece a precautionary credit line next year. | |
| The possibility of Syriza coming to power is threatening to upend the economic negotiations. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister and a champion of austerity in Greece and other countries, said in an interview with the German daily Bild on Saturday that any Greek government would have to honor existing agreements. | |
| “New elections won’t change anything about Greece’s debt,” he said, referring to a debt burden equal to 174 percent of gross domestic product, the highest in the eurozone. | |
| The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, insisted over the weekend that his party’s program for tackling the “humanitarian crisis” in Greece was “not negotiable,” though his party has not explained how the Greek state would pay for the promised benefits. | |
| Speaking after the vote, Mr. Tsipras referred to “a historic day for Greek democracy.” | |
| “Greek M.P.s showed that democracy cannot be blackmailed, however much pressure is exerted,” he said. “Today the government of Mr. Samaras, which has looted society for the past two and a half years, belongs to the past.” | |
| The elections for the largely ceremonial role of Greek president, usually a muted affair, are taking place in an increasingly polarized political climate. | |
| Political parties have accused each other of scaremongering, and new political movements are being established. One of the new movements is being created by former Prime Minister George A. Papandreou, who signed the first of Greece’s two loan agreements in 2010. | |
| Mr. Papandreou belongs to the junior coalition party Pasok, the once-mighty Socialist party set up by his father; his move is expected to seriously rattle the party, which has seen its support plummet over the years as austerity-weary Greeks have withdrawn their support. |