Greece in talks to form coalition government

Negotiations to form a coalition government in Greece began on June 18 and will continue on June 19.

The leader of the conservative center-right New Democracy party, which won 129 seats in the 300-seat Greek Parliament, Antonis Samaras, made the statement on June 18 during negotiations on forming a government with the leader of the Democratic Left (DL) party Fotis Kouvelis.

According to observers, the New Democracy party is seeking to form a coalition with the center-left Socialist Party Pasok, which came in third with 33 seats, and the Democratic Left Party, which won 17 seats in parliament, to complete its mission of forming a coalition government.

Mr. Antonis Samaras. (Source: AP)

If it does, Greece will have a coalition government with 179 seats in the 300-seat parliament, with a majority enough for Athens to comply with the commitments agreed with international lenders in exchange for a 130 billion euro bailout.

However, it is clear that the negotiations to form a coalition government will not be easy. The leaders of the Socialist Pasok and left-wing DL parties have not yet confirmed that they will join a coalition government with the New Democracy party. Mr. Kouvelis affirmed that DL's participation in a coalition government depends largely on agreements between the political parties.

Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos proposed a broad coalition of four parties, including New Democracy, Pasok, Democratic Left and the Union of the Far Left Forces (Syriza), which won 71 seats. However, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras refused to join the coalition government, citing his opposition to the bailout packages for Greece from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) with their austerity conditions.

According to the plan, if within three days, the leader of the New Democracy party Samaras fails to negotiate to form a coalition government, Greek President Karolos Papoulias will hand over this task to Mr. Alexei Sipras, the leader of Syriza, the party that came second in the recent parliamentary election. Public opinion hopes that the scenario of all political parties failing to form a coalition government will not happen again./.

According to (Vietnam+) - DT