By Niki Kitsantonis, New York Times
ATHENS — Greece’s Parliament failed to elect a new president on Monday in the final round of a three-stage vote, paving the way for early general elections that could open the door to a leftist party that opposes the terms of the country’s international bailouts.
The governing coalition’s candidate, Stavros Dimas, a former European commissioner, garnered 168 votes in the 300-seat house, 12 short of the 180 votes required, with 132 voting against.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he would visit President Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday and ask him to dissolve Parliament immediately so that early elections could be held on Jan. 25.
“The country has no time to lose,” Mr. Samaras said. “We did what we could to elect a president and avert early elections and the dangers they entail,” he said. “Now, what Parliament failed to do, the people must do.”
Speaking after the vote, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the opposition Syriza party that is ahead in opinion polls, was jubilant and called it “a historic day for Greek democracy.”
“Greek M.P.s showed that democracy cannot be blackmailed, however much pressure is exerted,” he said. “Today the government of Mr. Samaras, which has looted society for the past two and a half years, belongs to the past.”
The new political upheaval in Greece has not caused panic like that felt across the eurozone in 2012, when it seemed possible that the country could be forced to abandon the euro, which shook the bloc that shares that currency.
The prospect of elections has unsettled international markets and Greece’s creditors, however, because the leftist party Syriza, which has pledged to renegotiate the country’s international bailouts and to seek a write-down of Greece’s huge debt, is expected to win.
Opinion polls show the leftists firmly ahead of Mr. Samaras’s conservative New Democracy party, although Syriza’s lead has narrowed in recent weeks as the prospect of protracted political and financial uncertainty has grown. The Athens Stock Exchange fell by 10 percent during the vote, trimming losses to 7.4 percent later in the day.
The yield on 10-year government bonds, which moves in the opposite direction to the price, spiked nearly a full point to 9.3 percent. The outcome of the parliamentary vote also weighed on markets in the overall eurozone, with the Euro Stoxx 50 blue-chip index losing about 1 percent. The euro was little changed at $1.2199.
In an interview with state television over the weekend, Mr. Samaras pushed opposition legislators to align with the government in Monday’s vote, saying that failing to elect a president would be “political blackmail” and would result in “pointless upheaval” for the country.
Despite furious lobbying by the government, Mr. Dimas received only 168 votes, the same number as in the second ballot last week and eight more than in the first vote on Dec. 17.
Mr. Samaras accused Syriza of “foolish bravado,” adding that the leftists’ economic program was “full of unilateral moves” that would upset Greece’s creditors and jeopardize the country’s fragile return to growth.
Mr. Samaras’s coalition government is working with the so-called troika of lenders, which has granted Greece two bailouts worth 240 billion euros, or about $292 billion, since 2010 to keep the country liquid. In return, the troika has demanded an array of austerity measures that has slashed household incomes by a third and pushed unemployment above 25 percent.
Negotiations with the members of the troika — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — on a tough economic program have been dragging amid rising opposition in Greece to austerity. But eurozone officials have expressed their readiness to extend Greece a precautionary credit line next year.
The possibility of Syriza coming to power is threatening to upend the economic negotiations. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister and a champion of austerity in Greece and other countries, said in an interview with the German daily Bild on Saturday that any Greek government would have to honor existing agreements.
“New elections won’t change anything about Greece’s debt,” he said, referring to a debt burden equal to 174 percent of gross domestic product, the highest rate in the eurozone.
Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at the London-based Eurasia Group, said the domestic troubles in Greece had the potential to once again bring broader consequences for Europe.
“France and Italy will be vulnerable economically, as both have done little to reform since the days of the debt crisis,” he said, adding that the southern periphery would be more immune in economic terms. “They will be at risk politically, given their own troubles with populist parties.”
The key to investor confidence, he said, will be the E.C.B. and whether it undertakes bond buying at the turn of the year. “If the E.C.B. does not deliver, this could be the trigger for a major reversal in Europe wide market sentiment,” Mr. Rahman said.
Mr. Tsipras insisted over the weekend that his party’s program for tackling the “humanitarian crisis” in Greece was “not negotiable,” though Syriza has not explained how the Greek state would pay for the promised benefits.
The elections for the largely ceremonial role of Greek president, usually a muted affair, are taking place in an increasingly polarized political climate.
Political parties have accused each other of scaremongering, and new political movements are being established. One of the new movements is being created by former Prime Minister George A. Papandreou, who signed the first of Greece’s two loan agreements in 2010.
Mr. Papandreou belongs to the junior coalition party Pasok, the once-mighty Socialist party set up by his father; his move is expected to seriously rattle the party, which has seen its support plummet over the years as austerity-weary Greeks have withdrawn their support.
