Greece to have new elections in June after recent ones produce gridlock

[Kuya]

Greece will hold a new election after politicians failed to form a government, nine days following an inconclusive vote, prolonging a political crisis that pushes it closer to bankruptcy and exit from the euro.

After a third day of failed talks with political leaders on Tuesday, a spokesman for President Karolos Papoulias said the process of seeking a compromise had been declared a failure and a new vote must be held.

He did not immediately give the date for the new vote, but elections rules suggest it will be in mid-June. A caretaker government would be formed on Wednesday, the spokesman said.

Greece has been without a government since an inconclusive May 6 election left parliament split between supporters and opponents of a 130bn euro bailout package reviled by Greeks for imposing deep wage, pension and spending cuts.

Polls show the leftist SYRIZA party, which rejects the bailout and placed second in last week's vote, is now on course to win, a result that would give it an automatic bonus of 50 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

"We resisted in every way," Alexis Tsipras, SYRIZA's leader, said. "We made the decision to not betray your hopes and your expectations."

His party took second place in last week's election on an anti-austerity platform and blocked any deal with pro-bailout mainstream parties.

Opinion polls indicate SYRIZA could emerge as the strongest party in a second vote.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe...332434853.html

The other two parties that supported the bail out and austerity measures lost a severe amount of votes, with one party ending up in first place and the other in third. The far left Syriza party landed in second and has been the major block from forming a government. A far right wing pasty (heavily nationalist, named Golden Dawn) has also increased its votes in the may election, ending up, in i believe, fourth place. It also refuses to join any government that supports austerity.

[Pirian]

<getting news from John Stewart> So, what's this I hear about Greece voting in Communist and Neo Nazi's?

[Cantih]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_%28Greece%29

[Kuya]

A crisis is always a nice opportunity for fringe parties to get voted in.

[Acturus]

A crisis is always a nice opportunity for fringe parties to get voted in.

Oh good, because Fringe only has one more season, and I want to see all of those characters stay employed.

[Ashmada]

"Voted in" is quite an exageration; Golden Dawn made quite a monstrous push (from 0 to 21 seats) and the Communists did gain a lot of ground (+5 seats) but neither is close to being voted in.

The problem is quite simple to understand, much harder to solve: like Belgium, Greece works on a proportional representation system, so you've got to control more than 50% of parliamentary seats. Often, that means a coalition. Sometimes, radical minority partners are brought into the coalition, but they rarely have much control.
Obviously, that coalition has to agree on a program for the term prior to entering exercise.

Remember when my country was without govt for more than a year? Well, that's the kind of shit going on in Greece atm, albeit for very different reasons (flemish nationalism in our case; major economic troubles in theirs): the parties can't agree on a coalition.


Seats:
- New Democracy: 108 seats - democratic right
- Coalition of the Radical Left: 52 seats - far-ish left
- Panhellenic Socialist Movement: 41 seats - also democratic left
- Independent Greeks: 33 seats - nonsense. Seriously, these guys are so populistic their party line is all over the place
- Communist Party: 26 seats - guess
- Golden Dawn: 21 seats - far-right
- Democratic Left: 19 seats - guess


They didn't manage to get 150+ seats to agree on a program; they'll vote again.
Probably won't change shit.

It's the Achilles' heal of a proportional representation system: sure, we don't have to deal with the problems of a bipartisan majority system like you guys, but when our politicians throw a tantrum and refuse to get along, no govt is formed.

[Cadsuane]

God do I ever fucking hate the greeks.

[Ragnus]

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152847...ece-exits-euro

Side effect of this fubar'd election is that experts believe there is an 80-90% chance of Greece leaving the Euro-zone. There have been major runs on the banks for Euros with this news and Greece may be plunged back into a cash only economy which would be disastrous.