Poll stations in Greece, Armenia and Serbia opened on Sunday, amid economic challenges in the countries.
Poll stations in Greece, Armenia and Serbia opened on Sunday, amid economic challenges in the countries.
General elections started in Greece on Sunday, after a campaign marked by public anger over swinging austerity cuts.
Interior ministry announced polluting stations opened at 7:00 am (0400 GMT), and it’s due to end at 7:00
pm, with the first exit polls expected soon after. The first official results are not expected much before 11:00 pm.
After two years of cuts, opinion polls suggest voters are set to punish Greece's two main parties for having agreed to more belt-tightening in return for two international bailouts worth 240 billion Euros ($314.0 billion).
That prospect worries international lenders such as the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, who fear that the resulting political instability could plunge the eurozone back into crisis.
Both Greece's Pasok socialist party and the New Democracy conservatives, the dominant political forces for the past four decades, look likely to lose votes to around 30 smaller parties.
Some of those parties are openly hostile to the cuts imposed by the previous administration in return for the international loans.
SERBIA VOTE OVERSHADOWED BY ECONOMY
Meanwhile, Serbians voted Sunday for a new president and parliament after a campaign dominated by economic issues, pitting pro-European President Boris Tadic against conservative populist Tomislav Nikolic.
Surveys have put Tadic and Nikolic neck-and-neck in the presidential race, with their parties also running close in the parliamentary elections.
The elections are seen as a turning point for Serbia because for the first time in almost two decades they are focused on economy rather than the Balkan conflicts that left Belgrade internationally isolated for much of the past two decades.
Both camps support Serbia's EU membership bid while breakaway Kosovo, which overshadowed the last polls, has been pushed to the background by concerns about Serbia's stumbling economy and record unemployment.
ARMENIA VOTE
In Armenia, parliamentary elections kicked off on Sunday amid a battle for supremacy between the governing party and its coalition partner, led by a wealthy former arm wrestling champion.
"We expect highly active participation," Armen Khazarian, head of the commission at one polling station in Yerevan, told AFP.
It is the biggest test of the ex-Soviet state's democratic credentials since disputed presidential elections in 2008, when mass rallies ended in clashes between riot police and opposition supporters that left 10 people dead.
The authorities in the impoverished country of 3.3 million people have promised an unprecedentedly clean contest for the 131-seat National Assembly in the hope of avoiding further political turmoil.
