New Democracy

The year ended in the Greek stock market with annual losses of 29 percent for the benchmark, but Wednesday provided an unexpected rise to prices that left some observers wondering what it is they may have missed and the traders have already in mind.

Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Tuesday that he didn’t believe any party will be able to win an outright majority in the January 25 elections and that a unity government should be formed.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras called on SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras to come clean about where he plans to find the money to fulfill his party’s pre-election pledges.

New Democracy saw the number of its MPs in Greece's 300-seat Parliament rise to 129 after two independents joined the conservative party on Tuesday.

An independent lawmaker for the islands of the Dodecannese in the southeastern Aegean was welcomed back into the fold of New Democracy on Tuesday, bringing the number of MPs representing the party that is heading Greece's coalition government in snap elections next month to 128 in the 300-seat House.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said on Dec. 30 that a snap election planned for next month would determine whether the country remains part of the eurozone.
      
"This struggle will determine whether Greece stays in Europe," Samaras said, as he asked the president to dissolve parliament ahead of an election set for January 25.
      

Outgoing Greek President Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday welcomed Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at his central Athens office to discuss the dissolution of Parliament and early general elections following the failure of lawmakers on Monday to approve the coalition government's successor for Papoulias.

Greek left-wing opposition party Syriza's poll lead over the ruling conservatives has narrowed slightly to 3.0 percentage points, according to a poll published after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras proposed a Jan. 25 parliamentary election.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is due to meet President Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday to ask for Parliament to be dissolved, ushering in one of the briefest election campaigns Greece has ever known before national polls are held on January 25.

In an eleventh-hour effort to bolster the government’s candidate in a crucial presidential vote Monday that is likely to spark early general elections, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras made an appeal to undecided lawmakers over the weekend, saying snap polls would lead to “pointless upheaval” for the country.