Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 14-12-18

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Greek Parliament fails to elect new president in first round of voting

[02] German Chancellor Merkel: Greece's prospects are better than two years ago

[03] SYRIZA spokesman dissmises possibility of government for special purpose

[01] Greek Parliament fails to elect new president in first round of voting

The deputies participating in the vote had only two options: they could either vote for by calling out Dimas' name or abstain by calling out 'present'.

The five MPs absent during the roll-call vote were the independent deputies Georgios Kasapidis and Kostas Giovanopoulos, former Golden Dawn and now independent deputies Stathis Boukouras and Chrysovalantis Alexopoulos and main opposition SYRIZA MP Anna Hatzisofia, who was abroad.

Hatzisofia had sent a letter stating that if she were in Parliament she would vote 'present' (not supporting Dimas' candidacy) but her statement could not be counted as a vote.

One surprise was the vote of independent MP Panagiotis Melas who also abstained, even though it had earlier seemed as though he would support Dimas.

None of the MPs strayed from the official party line as decided by their Parliamentary groups during the first round of voting, with all 127 New Democracy deputies and all 28 PASOK deputies, the two parties in the coalition government, voting in support of Dimas. An additional five votes in favour of Dimas were given by independent deputies, among them former DIM.AR MPs Spyros Lykoudis, Grigoris Psarianos and Katerina Markou, former Independent Greeks MP Georgios Davris and former PASOK MP Christos Aidonis.

The MPs that did not support Dimas and abstained by calling out 'present' included all 70 SYRIZA MPs that were present for the vote, except Hatzisofia, all 12 Independent Greeks MPs, all 12 Communist Party of Greece (KKE) MPs, all 10 Democratic Left (DIM.AR) MPs and all 16 far-right Golden Dawn MPs.

The independent MPs that abstained included Vyron Polydoras (formerly of ND), Petros Tatsopoulos (formerly of SYRIZA), Mimis Androulakis, Theodora Tzakri, Markos Bolaris and Theodoros Parastatidis (former of PASOK), Vassilis Kapernaros, Mika Iatridi, Rachel Makri, Chrysoula Giatagana, Panagiotis Melas and Yiannis Kourakos (formerly of Independent Greeks) and Odysseas Voudouris, Paris Moutsinas and Vassilis Economou (formerly of DIM.AR).

Parliament President Evangelos Meimarakis has announced that the second round of roll-call voting will be held next Tuesday, December 23 at noon and will again require a two-thirds majority or 200 votes. If this is not reached, a third round on December 29 will require 180 votes. Following failure of the third round to elect a president, the country goes to national elections.

[02] German Chancellor Merkel: Greece's prospects are better than two years ago

Merkel noted that countries affected by the crisis have seen their competition rising and their deficits reducing, adding that all these could not have been achieved without the decisive action of each country and without the decisive, joint action at a European level.

Later on Thursday, the German parliament is expected to ratify the Finance ministry's demand on a two-month extension of the Greek programme and to give Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble the authorisation to negotiate on behalf of the German government Greece's precautionary credit line.

[03] SYRIZA spokesman dissmises possibility of government for special purpose

Skourletis dismissed talk about a special purpose government. "We are not interested of a special purpose government, with special purpose governments, with sole purpose the continuation of the memorandum policy ... We are not interested of these proposals," he said.

"For the first time since 2010 we will have a credible discussion with our partners as a government with a fresh popular mandate," he said and acknowledged that there are difficulties.

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