Greece: Elect a new President or dissolve Parliament?

(Baonghean) - On Monday, December 29, Greek parliamentarians began the third and final round of voting to elect a President for the country. Each vote of the parliamentarians decides whether Greece will have a new President or the country's Parliament will be dissolved.

On Monday, the fate of Greece will be decided by the votes of each member of parliament. And the most important question now for the Greek Parliament is “180 votes or dissolution?”. If Mr. Stavros Dimas, the candidate for President nominated by the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, does not win at least 180 votes in the third round, the Parliament will be automatically dissolved. People will be forced to hold an election on January 25, 2015 or February 1, 2015 to elect a new Parliament for the country.

Greek Parliament on December 17. Photo: AFP/Aris Messinis

At 9:00 a.m. local time (about 6:00 p.m. Vietnam time), 300 MPs began voting to decide whether to choose “Stavros Dimas” or simply “dissolution”. In the latter case, the MPs’ choice is to express their opposition to Mr. Dimas for pursuing the austerity policy that the government coalition of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been pursuing for the past 4 years. The election results will be announced within 1 hour.

Based on the results of the first two rounds, it is difficult to imagine that Mr. Stavros Dimas will win 180 votes. In the previous two rounds, Mr. Dimas received only 160 votes in the first round on December 17 and 168 votes in the second round on December 23. On Saturday, in an interview with Nerit TV, Mr. Dimas assured that he is “doing and doing everything in his power” to avoid a new parliamentary election. According to a survey conducted on Sunday, 44.1% of Greeks think Mr. Samaras is the best choice for the country's leadership at this time, while 34.3% of people chose Mr. Tsipras.

Analyst Spyros Lykoudis told Reuters on Sunday that the prospects for the Greek election were not good. “Unless a miracle happens or one side changes its position, I personally think that the parliament will not elect a new president for Greece on Monday. Anything is possible, but it seems that the parties are preparing for a new parliamentary election,” Lykoudis said.

As the presidential election in Greece is drawing to a close, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble warned in an interview with Bild that “even if there is a new election, Greece’s debt will remain unchanged (175% of GDP). Every new government must respect the agreements made by its predecessors.”

Chu Thanh(According to LeMonde December 29)