Greece Swears in Caretaker PM ahead of New Polls
A senior judge was sworn in Wednesday as Greece's caretaker prime minister with the sole task of holding new elections in June after an inconclusive ballot on May 6.
Panagiotis Pikrammenos, the 67-year-old head of the Council of State, the country's top administrative court, will name his cabinet on Thursday, when the new parliament is also scheduled to convene.
Reports said that veteran diplomat Petros Molyviatis would return to head the foreign ministry after a prior stint in 2004-2006, while outgoing interior minister Tassos Yianitsis would take over as finance minister.
A retired general and former head of the army general staff, Frangoulis Frangos, is the reported choice for the post of defense minister.
Pikrammenos was appointed after Greek political parties failed to form a coalition government following elections in which no clear victor emerged.
The political uncertainty in Greece has raised fears among the country's international creditors, the EU and the IMF, that structural reforms pledged in return for bailout loans, will be delayed or even scuppered.
The party most likely to win the next election, radical leftist Syriza, wants to tear up Greece's EU-IMF loan agreement and overthrow labor and salary reforms it rejects as "barbaric".
Source: Agence France Presse
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