ATHENS – [ANA-MPA]
A second round of voting to elect the new president of the Hellenic Republic on Friday [1/31] again failed to garner the 200 votes required under the Constitution for any of the candidates to be elected.
All 300 MPs in Parliament participated in the election, in which the ruling New Democracy nominee and former parliament president Constantine Tasoulas again received 160 votes. Main opposition PASOK nominee Tasos Giannitsis came third with 34 votes, while Louka Katseli, nominated by SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance received 40 votes. The nominee of the Niki party, Konstantinos Kyriakou, received 14 votes and 52 MPs abstained.
Under the procedure envisaged by the Constitution, the parliamentary plenum must now convene again after five days for a third vote to elect a president on February 6, in which a successful candidate must receive a minimum of three fifths (180 votes) of the 300-member parliament.
If no candidate is elected in the third election, the vote will be repeated against after another five days and the successful candidate will need only an absolute majority of 151 votes in the 300-member parliament to be elected. If this is also unsuccessful, there will be a fifth and final vote in which the candidate with the highest number of votes, irrespective of their number, will become president of the country.
During Friday’s vote, Tasoulas received 156 votes from ruling ND deputies and four votes from independent deputies Antonis Samaras, Marios Salmas, Charalambos Katsivardas (formerly from Spartiates) and Pavlos Sarakis (former of Elliniki Lysi).
Katseli received votes from 26 SYRIZA-PA deputies and the 11 MPs of Nea Aristera, as well as independent MPs Athina Linou, Yiannis Sarakiotis and Areti Papaioannou (formerly from Plefsi Eleftherias).
Giannitsis was voted for by the 31 MPs of PASOK-Movement for Change and independent MPs Burhan Baran, Rania Thraskia (formerly from SYRIZA-PA) and Petros Pappas (also formerly SYRIZA-PA).
Kyriakou was voted for by the 10 MPs of the Niki party and independent MPs Dionysios Valtogiannis, Ioannis Dimitrokallis, Georgios Manousos and Konstantinos Floros, formerly from Spartiates.
Among those that abstained were the 21 MPs of the Communist Party of Greece, 11 MPs of Elliniki Lysi, six MPs from Plefsi Eleftherias and five MPs from Spartiates, as well as a number of independent MPs.
