Winner of Greek Elections 2012 Antonis Samaras has been appointed by the President of the Republic to form a government. As Samaras achieved only 18.85% of the votes but failed by far to secure the absolute majority, Karolos Papoulias assigned him with the mandate to lead exploratory talks in order to form a coalition government.
Antonis Samaras favors a “national salvation government” with as many as possible partners.
Under the pressure of public voice and Greece’s lenders, Antonis Samaras set already two red lines as a precondition to his potentialpartners: 1) stay in the euro zone 2) re-negotiate the Memorandum of Understanding with the target of development and growth.
On Monday morning, Samaras excluded right away extreme-right Chrysi Avgi as partner in a coalition government. He also excluded communist KKE, a party that rejects any cooperation and insists of euro and EU exit.
Antonis Samaras is scheduled to hold meetings with Alexis Tsipras/SYRIZA at 4 pm, with Evangelos Venizelos/PASOK at 5 pm and Fotis Kouvelis/Democratic Left at 6.30 pm.
Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos, former ND MP, rejected Samaras’ invitation to attend government building talks.
A coalition consisting of ND-SYRIZA-PASOK-DemLeft would be a strong power in the Greek parliament with 220 seats. Will the party leaders agree?
Tsipras, the leader of the second winner, has a clear red line: To denounce the MoU. This could put Samaras, who had put his signature under the second bailout programme, under immense stress.
The day is still young to know and Samaras has three days to achieve some agreement.
A coalitions of ND-PASOK-DemLeft would form a 168-seat strong government.
Both SYRIZA and Demcratic Left have reservations they may be dragged to a ND-PASOK pro-memorandum government with the “Government or Chaos”.
SYRIZA would prefer to push for a left-government with KKE and DemLeft but this is almost impossible due to simple arithmetics. Such a government would have a minority of 97 seats in a 300-parliament. Should the seats of right/nationalists Indep. Greeks be added a government could reach 130 seats. Theoretically this is possible: to have a minority government with the parliamentary “tolerance”/support of other parties. But DemLeft would reject a coalition with Indep. Greeks. Another question is , of course, how long such a government would manage to survive.
Constitutional Procedures
Should Samaras fail to form a government within three days, the President will asssign the leader of the second party. Tsipras will have another days to make ends meet. Should he fail too, the President will assign the leader of PASOK. Venizelos will have also three days to find government partners.
The failure of three leaders to find a sustainable solution will oblige the president to invite all parliament party leaders for talks of a national unity government. If talks bring no fruits, repeat elections are more likely and thus whithin 30 days. (Read also here about the procedure according to Greek constitution).
According to Greek media, repeat elections could take place on June 10th or June 17th 2012. These days depend on whether the political leaders assigned with exploratory talks will exhaust the 3-day mandate.
Lucas Papademos resigned on Monday noon as PM but remains as caretaker PM until the new government is formed. SomesScenarios do not exclude him as PM in a national salvation government.
According to latest information, SYRIZA considers to question with legal means whether ND is elligible to be granted the 50-seats bonus as its rates have been extremely low. Without the 50-seats bonus, ND’s seats would sharply drop down to 58 seats. The first party that emerged from the May 6th elections would have just 6 seats more than SYRIZA. I will post more about it as soon as I have more information.
I think SYRIZA has a good point with those 50-bonusseats. As it was clearly written for stability within a de-facto two-party system. Now it is a gross distortion of the result.
But I don’t think they will have any real legal ground to stand on. Alas.
they may seek one once they appeal to court
technically they might have a case. as its sort of ok to get the bonus if you have clear majority to make ur goverment stronger but when it workls this way it actually goes against the constitution article with regards to proportional represantation. so when u have 35-40% of the vote 50seats doesnt affect proportion that much as u r clearly ahead. but when everyone is struggling for 20% then 50 seats affects the proportion and could in theory be uconstitutional. but that for the law pedantics to figure out. i always considered that any bonus is wrong. people vote and that should be upheld. if people wanted a party to have +40 or +50 then they would have voted that way. but as in all else in greece. the politicians made a system to perpetuate themselves. by the way if both nd and pasok are so interested in not letting greece without a goverment they could push the 50 bonus seat legitimacy ahead as that would give diiferent weight to parties and might actually lead to a viable coalition. depending on where the 50 seats are given. but my guess is they will only try and get their own power structure ahead and forget about the actual country as they have for the past 40 years
sure the bonus is wrong in a democracy. 50-seats applied for the first time on May 6 (ND Pavlopoulos law) while it was 40-s before. Really curious if they can legally overturn it.
BTW: it is called “enforced proportional representation” due to the bonus.
50 MPs as “bonus” for a party who achieved only 18 % haha, only in Greece…
so, can Greece just make up the rules as they go? What if the Syrizas or the pasok people make a rule that they get 100 seats each, then what happens?
no
By now, it should apparent to most Greek citizens and voters why the economic conditions have deteriorated to the point that an uncontrolled economic bankruptcy is a distinct possibility. Our democratically elected political leaders (cowards) have engaged in an endless, repetitive and disgusting blame game. They impose terms for their participation in a government of national unity they very well know that other politicians will outright reject. Other “cowards” have determined that governing is an anathema to them. So they prefer to criticize, to organize demonstrations and to give political speeches with no substance. Some of them are trying to paint others as being solely responsible for the impasse and the inevitability of having new elections. Other politicians have resorted in fear mongering tactics, in unsubstantiated exaggerations stating that a failure to form a unity government would be catastrophic for the nation and the economy. Nearly all of them have stated that they did their utmost, and went above and beyond to convince other political parties to join them in the formation of a government of national unity. Some of them are using two different languages, one for the national audience and one for the international audience, to describe their political positions on the memorandums. And the result so far has been a big zero in the quotient and a declaration to have new elections in June. All of them though are paying very close attention to national polls in order to plan their next steps.
Is it realistic to expect from professional politicians to form a government of national unity and to save our nation from an uncontrolled economic default? The answer is no, they can’t even agree on the terms of a televised debate. They can read and interpret the national polls though. Nearly 8 in 10 Greeks want the Euro while the majority of them don’t concur with the austerity measures. These measures are designed to make both the national debt and the budget deficit viable. The political parties (Laos, New Democracy, Pasok) which have either supported the first memorandum, or the second memorandum, or both memorandums have lost a significant number of votes in the May 6, 2012 elections compared to the Oct 4, 2009 elections. Most politicians are fully aware that a “very hot potato” has to be dealt with very soon. Namely, the nearly 12 billion euros in budget cuts, which are needed to secure the next tranche of the bailout package. Therefore, the expedient and easy solution is to say YES to Euro, NO to austerity measures and NO to both memorandums. Furthermore, they are determined to let the other political parties,( New Democracy, Pasok) solve the economic problems, since they firmly believe that they are the ones who have created them. For them inactions and reactions are preferable to taking actions and have responsibilities. In other words, they want the whole pie and the dog full and other political parties to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.
There is also another saying, “when the sh*t hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay” It would be up to the Greek voters to decide which politicians are just theorists, talkers, and dangerous gamblers and which ones are action takers, doers and difficult problem solvers. I believe it’s better to have a reckless driver, probably seeking a second chance, drive my car rather than someone else who doesn’t know how to drive.