Greece’s Parliament provided a widely expected vote of confidence to the leftist-dominated SYRIZA coalition government early Wednesday morning, hours before a crucial Eurogroup meeting is expected to signal whether eurozone lenders will grant the recession-plagued country a credit line — until the summer — without austerity-mandated strings attached.
Of the 300 MPs in Greece’s Parliament, 162 voted in favor, 137 against and one deputy, Golden Dawn leader Nikos Mihaloliakos, did not attend the session.
Leftist SYRIZA easily won the general election on Jan. 25 with just over 36 percent of the general vote, turning Alexis Tsipras into the youngest Greek prime minister in recent memory. However, the staunchly anti-bailout party failed to gain the 150+1 MPs needed to form a majority government. The small but equally anti-bailout Independent Greeks (AN.EL) party – located distinctly on the right of centre of Greece’s political spectrum — subsequently signed on to form the “left-to-slightly-right-wing” coalition.