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The Greek Parliament voted in the second round of presidential elections on 23 December, after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s candidate, former EU commissionner Stavros Dimas, did not get the 200 votes needed to be elected on the first round. “The government hopes that its candidate will get more support this time”, writes Kathimerini, as Samaras sought “political consensus in exchange for early elections at the end of 2015” and “pledged to broaden the government to include ‘pro-European’ personalities”.
The government also hopes to take advantage of a prosecutor shelving an investigation into the claims by Pavlos Haikalis on Monday, deeming in his report that there was no evidence to back the lawmaker’s allegations about a mediator trying to bribe him for his support to the government.
In the end, the second round ended with Dimas getting 168 votes. The third and last round will therefore take place on 29 December.
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