ATHENS: Debt-laden Greece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is a late convert to austerity whose penchant for risky politics once again is threatening to torpedo his career.
In a surprise move this month, Samaras pushed forward the date of a high-stakes presidential election, hoping to have one less problem to deal with when talks with the country's European Union and International Monetary Fund creditors resume in February.
But his government looks unlikely to muster the 180 parliamentary votes it needs on December 29, and failure to elect a president will trigger early elections.
This is not the first time Samaras has staked his career on a bold move that may backfire.
Two decades ago, as foreign minister, the 63-year-old did not hesitate to bring down an entire government over a fight about the official name of neighbouring Macedonia.
Then in 2012, Samaras -- who was then opposition leader -- insisted on terminating a six-month caretaker government under former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos.
At the time, he saw early elections as a "salvation" for Greece.
After parliament was dissolved, it took back-to-back ballots in May and June 2012 to form a shaky coalition government.
It stalled Greece's fiscal reforms and sparked speculation that the country was about to be ejected from the eurozone.
Apart from resulting in a crushing defeat for Samaras' own New Democracy party, the 2012 elections also gave a huge boost to anti-austerity groups such as radical leftists Syriza -- which now seek to replace him -- and put neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn in parliament.
A former opponent of austerity policies, Samaras once advocated a position now adopted by his arch-rival, 40-year-old Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras.
Two years ago, he promised to do everything to keep Greece in the euro, but also argued for an easing of the terms of the EU-IMF bailout.
Foreign creditors and EU capitals geared up for a fight -- but once in power, Samaras jumped on the austerity bandwagon.
- Meteoric rise and fall -
Elected member of parliament at the age of 26 after an elite education, Samaras had a meteoric rise to power which was cut short during the crisis with the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia in the 1990s.
He then formed his own party, Political Spring, but its early success fizzled out and he disappeared from the political scene for almost a decade.
In 2004, Samaras was allowed back into New Democracy and five years later he beat the daughter of the prime minister he toppled, Dora Bakoyannis, to become party leader.
A descendant of a prominent family, Samaras holds economics and business degrees from top American schools Amherst College and Harvard University.
While at Amherst, he was friends with former Greek prime minister and socialist party Pasok leader George Papandreou, who was later to become his political rival, a source of amusement for the Greek media.
Samaras took a strong stance on immigration, pledging to "take back" Greek cities from "illegal invaders" -- a reference to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, which he placed in detention centres and deported back home.
Ironically, critics say Samaras himself is partly to blame for Greece's immigration problem.
As foreign minister some two decades ago, he is said to have contributed to the first wave of illegal migration by opening the border to ethnic Greeks from neighbouring Albania when its communist regime imploded.
A number of major corporations including Hewlett-Packard and Philip Morris set up logistics hubs in Greece, but some prominent companies such as dairy giant Fage and Coca-Cola Hellenic also moved out.
A father of two, Samaras's ancestors were wealthy ethnic Greek merchants from Alexandria, Egypt, who founded the Benaki Museum, one of Greece's leading cultural establishments.
His great-grandmother Penelope Delta was one of the country's best-loved novelists.
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