It’s official, after the Greek general election on May 6th no party had a majority, and no party was able to cobble together a viable coalition government so new elections will be held on June 17th. So what happens if the same thing happens, nobody get’s a majority and no one’s able to cobble together a coalition? Does the Greek constitution place any kind of limit on these do-over elections? Or do they just keep having election after election until somebody manges to form a viable coalition or stage a succesful coup?
King Constantine?
Seriously, I don’t see a mechanism specified in the Greek Constitution.
To be pedantic, King Constantine II
They appoint a caretaker government, like now, composed of technocrats.
When there’s nobody willing to make a decision, I suspect the president appoints someone willing to make decisions. Not sure about Greece, but Canada has a thing called “Order in COuncil” where the Prime Minister’s Office can issue commands (effectively - dictator) until the elections are over and parliament convenes and ratifies or overrides them.
The problem is that nobody right now has the mandate to make long term decisions, and some groups (civil servants, police, tax collectors?) may not have incentive to follow commands from someone who may be gone in a month. If the situation persists fo months, the interim PM may be able to get things done.
Not sure about the Greek system, but this is the danger of proportional representation like Israel has, Italy used to have. The members are elected by the entire population from a list; the more votes the party gets, the more people from the list are members of parliament. Contrast this with the British system, where the one with the most votes in the riding is MP. So in the PR system, the trick is to get high up on the party list; everyone sucks up to the party leaders, and nobody wants to buck the party line to say “let’s have some sanity here”. As long as a decent number of voters countrywide buy even an irrational party line, you will have some members elected.
In the British system, someone who consistently fails to perform answers to their local voters and can lose if voters are more ticked off than the party brass. So individual MP’s are more likely to buck the party line, tell the party brass to smarten up so they get re-elected.
What is the Greek system - individual ridings, or proportional representation?
There will be a military coup before the year is out.