GREECE has given birth to its first proper coalition government in modern times. The three-party deal, routine by north European standards, emerged smoothly after just 48 hours of negotiations. Antonis Samaras, the centre-right New Democracy leader, was sworn in as prime minister pledging to “give stability and hope” to Greeks enduring the deepest recession in the country’s modern history. It is a pledge he cannot fulfil without lots of help from the rest of Europe.That Greece has a government at all is due to New Democracy’s better-than-expected performance in the June 17th election. It won 29.7% of the vote to 26.9% for Syriza, the radical left coalition led by 37-year-old Alexis Tsipras, a brash new political star whose claim that Greece could renegotiate its latest €130 billion ($164 billion) bail-out yet stay in the euro appealed to many voters. The PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) finished a distant third with 12.3%.
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