‘First test’

All eyes are on Greece on 17 December, as Athens’s Parliament gathers in the evening for the first attempt to elect the country’s president.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s candidate, former European commissionner Stavros Dimas, needs 200 votes to be elected in the first two ballots and 180 votes in the third, explains To Ethnos. Today’s vote will therefore be a “test” to check whether Dimas can get the 180 votes needed, as Samaras can only count on the governing majority’s 155 votes. He will therefore need to convince 25 representatives — mostly independent ones — to support Dimas.
If no candidate manages to get elected after the third attempt, the country will go to early general elections in March. According to a recent poll published by the Athens daily, left-wing anti-austerity Syriza would get 28 per cent of votes, Samaras’s New Democracy 23.1 per cent, its coalition partner PASOK 5 per cent and the Communist Party 5.5 per cent of votes. Neo-nazi Golden Dawn would get 5 per cent.