Greece’s parliament has failed to elect a new president of the Republic in the second of four rounds of voting on Friday.
The conservative government’s nominee, Konstantinos Tasoulas, received 160 votes, falling 40 short of the 200 needed for an outright win. Tasoulas received the same number of votes in the first round on January 25.
Louka Katseli, backed by leftist SYRIZA and the New Left Party, secured 40 votes, while Tasos Giannitsis, supported by the main PASOK opposition, garnered 34 votes. Kostas Kyriakou, the far-right Niki party’s candidate, received 14 votes.
A third round of voting, where the winner will require 180 votes to prevail, is scheduled for Thursday, February 6. If no candidate reaches the threshold, the requirement will drop to 151 votes in the fourth and final round, five days later.
Tasoulas, a former House speaker and New Democracy MP, is expected to secure the presidency in the final round, given New Democracy’s majority of 156 seats in the 300-seat parliament.
The Prime Minister’s decision to nominate Parliamentary Speaker Konstantinos Tasoulas, from his ruling New Democracy party, to become Greece’s new President sparked a wave of criticism from opposition parties.
Mitsotakis nominated Tasoulas for the post, currently held by Katerina Sakellaropoulou, during a televised statement on Wednesday. He said that Tasoulas is a widely accepted politician who was elected President of the Greek Parliament three times with the strongest majority in modern Greek history: with 283, 270 and 249 votes.
Tasoulas has been serving as President of the Hellenic Parliament since July 18, 2019. A member of the governing New Democracy, he has been an MP representing the region of Ioannina since 2000.
The Left in Greece proposes other candidates for President
However, opposition parties accused Mitsotakis of breaking tradition and being partisan.
PASOK spokesperson Kostas Tsoukalas, speaking on public broadcaster ERT, said that, “Mr. Mitsotakis is making a purely partisan choice by selecting a sitting MP from the New Democracy party for the highest office. He acted unilaterally, breaking political traditions and exposing his deep political insecurity.”
Tsoukalas said the “arbiter of the political system” cannot be a figure entirely aligned with the ruling party.
PASOK’s choice for President is Tasos Giannitsis, a politician, academic and business executive. He was Minister for Labor and Social Insurance and Minister for Foreign Affairs in the PASOK government in the early 2000s. He is a professor in the Economics Department of the University of Athens.
The New Left party of breakaway former SYRIZA dissidents denounced the nomination and said it was designed to perpetuate New Democracy’s conservative policies and put them in the hands of a President who’s supposed to be neutral.
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