New Democracy, PASOK Win Less than 33% in General Elections
With about 95 percent of the ballots counted, conservative New Democracy and Socialist PASOK won less than 33% of ballots and only 150 out of 300 parliament seats in Sunday's general elections in the country.
New Democracy polled just over 19%, the Left Coalition won 16.6% and PASOK gathered 13.4% of the votes. A total 10.6% voted for the Greek Communist Party, 8.5% cast a ballot for the Democratic Left and 7.0% backed the Independent Greeks party. The extreme right Golden Dawn party won 6.1%.
New Democracy and PASOK are the only two major parties supporting an EU/IMF bailout programme.
Upon the announcement of the results, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras called for a pro-European national unity government that would keep Greece in the euro zone. PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos too said the country needs a unity government, adding that his party had paid the price for handling the sovereign debt crisis, Reuters reported.
Under the constitution, Greek President Karolos Papoulias will give the biggest party three days to form a government. If it fails, the next largest group gets a chance and so on. If they all fail, new polls would be called about three weeks later.