Greek MPs vote to fend off snap election

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek parliament voted on Monday not to send a former minister to a special court over a bribery scandal, fending off the prospect of imminent snap elections.

Ruling New Democracy deputies took the party line and supported their fellow MP but a number of blank votes showed cracks in the government's solidarity, complicating its efforts to cope with a slowing economy and social unrest.

House speaker Dimitris Sioufas said 144 deputies in the 300-seat house voted in favor of the minister, while 146 voted against him and 8 cast blank ballots. It would have required 151 votes to send him to a special court.

"After this result, the proposal to prosecute Aristotle Pavlides is rejected," Sioufas said.

He denied any wrongdoing and has resisted pressure to resign his seat.

Defections in his one-seat parliamentary majority could have forced Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis to call an election more than two years early to coincide with a June 7 European Parliament ballot.

Discontent with Greece's slowing economy and high youth unemployment fueled the country's worst riots in decades in December, after police shot dead a teenager in Athens.

Parliament had voted late on Monday on whether Pavlides, a ruling New Democracy party MP and former Aegean minister, must stand trial on bribery charges.

"I am prepared for everything but I ask only for justice," Pavlides told parliament before the vote.

BRIBE ACCUSATIONS

The case was brought to light by a shipowner who testified that a Pavlides aide demanded bribes to grant a contract to run subsidized Aegean island ferry routes.

A committee of Greek MPs failed to reach agreement on the case last week, leaving the decision to the full house. All opposition parties asked deputies to vote against Pavlides, while New Democracy supported its deputy but allowed its MPs to cast a blank ballot, fearing outright dissent.

New Democracy has 151 deputies in the 300-seat parliament and although it would not immediately have lost its majority if Pavlides was sent to court, it would have found it hard to govern relying on a deputy on trial.

After five years in power, the government trails the socialist opposition in opinion polls, shaken by scandals -- from controversial land swaps between the state and a monastery to suspect government bond sales to state-run pension funds.

"At stake is our will to fight corruption," said socialist PASOK party leader George Papandreou. "The image of a government held hostage by corruption hurts all of us."

Karamanlis has accused PASOK of populist rhetoric in the face of the crisis and vowed to stay the economic policy course.

"Those who covered up scandals worth millions, now appear as preachers of morality," he told a rally on Sunday. "PASOK cultivates a sick climate that poisons public life."

The vote came as the government, under EU pressure to cut deficits and debt, has launched unpopular tax and wage measures to cope with the economic crisis.