The Republic President's time

Constitution provisions that last time came into effect in 1989 will be activated now, after the election results on Sunday.

Today, Monday, according to Article 37 of the Constitution, the President of the Republic begins the process of exploratory mandates to the heads of the first three parties. Each command is active for three days and within this period the recipient must explore if they can secure the confidence of parliament. Basically it is the start of a critical period for the country's political stability, which can last for up to 10 days and lead either to a stable coalition government or destabilization and new elections.

Papoulias will call ND president Antonis Samaras today, who has the relative majority in parliament, and will provide an exploratory mandate to form a government that enjoys the confidence of parliament.

This means that the leader of ND must:

-  either proceed to form a coalition government with the parties that have won as many seats as needed to overcome the barrier of 151. Thus ensures the absolute majority during the vote of confidence

- or ensure that a sufficient number of members from another political party will support him during the vote of confidence without some sort of governmental cooperation. This category also includes the script of "silent support" that lowers the threshold of an MP majority from 151 to 120

A majority in the process of the confidence vote is calculated based on the present MPs and can not be less than 120. Thus, a party could be absent from the voting to drop the limit to 120 votes.

As noted by constitutionalist Antonis Pantelis: "The President of the Republic does not accept unquestionably the assurance that the recipient can form a government that enjoys parliamentary confidence. He correlates and researches, and only if he is convinced does he provide the mandate to form a government. Otherwise, he advances the process of exploratory orders."

If the President of the Republic sees that the first party leader fails to form a government, he gives an exploratory mandate to the leader of the second largest party in parliament. And if this is unsuccessful too he proceeds to the third party. The same conditions and possibilities apply in all these cases.

In the event that all of the three exploratory commands are unsuccessful, Papoulias will hold a meeting of political leaders as a last effort to set up up a broad-based government.

Something similar happened last November when, after the resignation of George Papandreou, the political leaders decided to move to the edges of the Constitution, overcome the exploratory mandates and proceed directly to the meeting.

Ιf this scenario fails too, then the president of the Republic will seek to form a government by all parties in parliament with the sole task of leading the country to new elections. Finally, in case of failure he entrusts one of the presidents of the supreme courts of the country to form a government of the widest possible acceptance in order to hold elections.