The leader of Greece's conservative New Democracy party, Antonis Samaras, has been sworn in as Greek prime minister in a ceremony in Athens this afternoon.
Greek parties sealed a deal to form a conservative-led coalition earlier today and said they would start immediately to form a team to re-negotiate the tough austerity conditions in the international bailout propping up the near-bankrupt economy.
"Greece has a government," Evangelos Venizelos, head of the Socialist Pasok party told reporters after talks with conservative leader Antonis Samaras, the winner of Sunday's election.
Pasok, the former ruling party, will back the government in parliament but there was no word on who would serve in the new cabinet. Mr Venizelos said the make-up of the government remained to be fixed and would be discussed by the evening.
Mr Samaras has a three-day mandate to form a government and has to reach a deal before evening or risk returning Greece to the uncertainty which followed an inconclusive election on May 6th.
An official from one of the three parties in the coalition said that they had agreed to name National Bank Chairman Vassilis Rapanos as finance minister.
Although numerically Mr Samaras could form a government with just Pasok, which has 33 seats, both have sought a broader alliance that would be seen as potentially more stable and better able to weather the continuing storm of austerity measures taken in return for Greece’s rescue loans.
Such a government would broadly fulfill Greece’s pledges to its bailout creditors for further cutbacks and reforms, keeping the country within Europe’s joint currency. Otherwise, Greece would run out of cash and the continent could plunge deeper into a financial nightmare with global repercussions.
The austerity measures have left Greece struggling through its fifth year of a deep recession, with unemployment spiralling to 22 per cent and tens of thousands of businesses shutting down.
Fury over the cuts that have seen salaries and pensions slashed in the public sector propelled Syriza, led by 37-year-old Alexis Tsipras, from 4.6 per cent in 2009 to nearly 27 per cent in Sunday’s election and gave anti-austerity parties more than 50 per cent in total.
Mr Tsipras had campaigned on a strong anti-bailout ticket, vowing to scrap the country’s pledges and play tough with creditors — Greece’s European partners and the International Monetary Fund.
With public anger palpable, both Mr Venizelos and Mr Samaras say they will seek changes to some of the terms in Greece’s bailout deals, on which the country has depended since May 2010. But they have pledged to respect the commitments for further austerity and reform.
Agencies