Anti-bail-out party rejects Greek austerity pledge The result of Sunday's parliamentary election raised troubling new questions about Greece's ability to stay solvent and in the euro currency bloc. A failure to put together a government this week would trigger another election in June, increasing fears that Greece's painful deficit-cutting program - along with Europe's faltering efforts to resolve its debt crisis - could be derailed. Greece was expected to pass billions in new austerity measures in the next month in order to get its next batch of bail-out money. Those worries sent shares sinking nearly 7 per cent on the Athens Stock Exchange on Monday, and shares dropped a further 1.3 per cent by midday on Tuesday. "The pro-bail-out parties no longer have a majority in parliament to vote in destructive measures for the Greek people," he added. This is a very important victory for our society. Tsipras also demanded an examination of Greece's debt and a moratorium on repayment of the part of it that is "onerous." If Tsipras fails to build a government over the next three days, the mandate will pass to Evangelos Venizelos, head of the third-placed Socialist PASOK party. If he is also unsuccessful, party leaders will hold a last-ditch effort to reach consensus. If nothing comes from that, elections will take place within a month. Voters furious over years of painful budget cuts and higher taxes hammered both Samaras' conservative New Democracy and PASOK in the ballot. The two parties have dominated politics for the last four decades and had backed Greece's multibillion-dollar bailouts. Support scattered to several smaller parties - ranging from moderate leftists to an extreme right group blamed for street attacks against immigrants. Greece is now in its fifth year of recession and unemployment has spiked to over 21 per cent. "With the state the economy is in, (Tsipras) does not have the luxury of losing any time," Dimitris Mardas, an associate professor of economics at Thessaloniki University, told The Associated Press. Mardas said he believed there was room to negotiate a coalition government. If a combination of parties gather more than 50 per cent of the seats in parliament, they can govern - period. What anyone else says doesn't matter. They are professionals, not children," he said. Amid the political drama, Greece raised 1.3 billion euros in a debt auction on Tuesday but its short-term borrowing costs continued to creep up. It sold six-month treasury bills at an interest rate of 4.69 per cent, compared with a 4.55 per cent rate last month.