By Antonis Galanopoulos and Marcus Bensasson Dec 18, 2014 11:04 AM
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras addresses the Greek parliament in Athens on Dec. 11, 2014.
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Greece moved a step closer to early elections after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras failed to gather enough support for his nominee in a parliamentary vote for a new head of state.
In voting in Athens yesterday, 160 lawmakers in Greece’s 300-seat chamber backed Samaras’s candidate for the presidency, Stavros Dimas, short of the 200 votes required in the first of three attempts this month. Samaras has 155 lawmakers in his governing coalition and failure to rally enough support for Dimas will lead to the dissolution of parliament.
“This is clearly at the lower end of the government’s expectations,” Michael Michaelides, a rates strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London, said in an e-mail. “It will need a big political development between now and Dec. 29 for him to get the votes.”
Attention now turns to the second vote on Dec. 23, when Samaras again needs a two-thirds majority to win. If he fails in the third attempt, set for Dec. 29, parliament is dissolved and early elections will be called.
Samaras needs to do something to persuade more parliamentarians to support Dimas, Athanasios Vamvakidis, head of G-10 foreign exchange strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said in an e-mail after the vote. “Promising early elections may help,” he said.
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