Greece’s embattled prime minister, Antonis Samaras, issued an eleventh-hour appeal to parliamentarians on Saturday in an attempt to avert snap elections that would almost certainly plunge the eurozone into renewed crisis.

In an impassioned plea, he urged MPs to rid the country of “menacing clouds” gathering over it by supporting the government’s presidential candidate when they gather for the final round of a three-stage vote on Monday.

Failure would automatically trigger elections that radical leftists would be likely to win. The ballot has therefore electrified Greece, rattled markets and unnerved Europe. “I am once again appealing to all MPs, of all parties, to vote for the president of the republic,” Samaras told state television. “If we don’t elect a president the responsibility will hang heavily over those who don’t vote for [him]. They will be remembered by everyone, especially history.”

Samaras’s high-stakes gamble of calling the poll two months early has brought him face-to-face with the spectre of losing power if he fails to convince 12 MPs to back Stavros Dimas, his choice for the presidential post. A former European commissioner, Dimas received 168 ballots in a second round of voting last week – well short of the 200 required. On Monday he must amass 180 to be elected.

Following a Christmas of frantic behind-the-scenes politicking, the prime minister warned of the perils of taking the debt-stricken country down the road of “absurd adventure” if deputies failed to endorse Dimas. “People do not want early elections… We gave sweat and blood in recent years to keep Greece standing upright.”

The government, enmeshed in tortuous negotiations with the EU and IMF to keep Greece afloat, has repeatedly warned of the dangers that would be unleashed if a general election were to be called. With its fierce anti-austerity rhetoric, the radical left Syriza party has revived fears of Athens being forced to leave the eurozone if it does assume office and refuses to enforce tough austerity measures in return for aid. Samaras’s do-or-die intervention was aimed at swaying lawmakers who have yet to decide which way to vote, with the conservative leader appealing to the consciences of MPs. Successive polls have shown the vast majority of Greeks are opposed to early elections.

The ruling coalition won support from eight independent MPs after Samaras took the unexpected step last week of pledging to expand his government with pro-European cross-party figures and hold elections before his own term expires in mid-2016. Several others have signalled that they may change course. But whether politicians from the small opposition Democratic Left party, or the rightwing Independent Greeks party, Anel, would break ranks – leaders of both have ruled out supporting Dimas – is highly debatable.

“It is clear the government is not very hopeful about mustering the votes,” said Ilias Nicolakopoulos, a political science professor at Athens university. “Samaras’s remarks tonight show he is preparing for elections in a highly polarised atmosphere, whose mantra will be ‘us or them, salvation of catastrophe’.”

If a snap poll is called, it is likely to be on 1 February but it would be an election no one wants. The end of 2014 finds Greeks in tentative mood, with their country only just beginning to show what the German chancellor Angela Merkel felt fit to describe earlier this year as the “first tender shoots of success”. After its worst economic crisis in living memory, the country has just started to emerge from six years of recession. Seen from the perspective of the person on the street, coping with worsening poverty and record levels of unemployment, the by-products of relentless attempts at fiscal rectitude, the drama embroiling parliament makes no sense. For many it says more about the nation’s longstanding divisions – enhanced by the chasm between opponents and supporters of the bailout accords – than anything else.

Neither Samaras nor Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, have tried to communicate with each other for the past year. “Why can’t they just be civilised and make up?” asked Giorgos Karezos, whose coffee shop on Stadiou Street, almost within view of the parliament, is a meeting point for civil servants, political aides and businessmen. “In a single day, the Athens stock exchange plummeted 10%,” he said, pointing to a flat-screen TV that reports the market news. “You don’t get that even in times of war, and all because our politicians can’t agree to talk to one another.” The lack of consensus has exacerbated efforts to make a clean exit from the onerous bailout agreements that have governed life in Greece since its near economic collapse in 2009. The EU, ECB and IMF – the “troika” of international bodies that have propped up the economy to the tune of €240bn – have agreed to extend the financial assistance programme until the end of February, but with both sides wrangling over further reforms, they have not supported a precautionary credit line that would support Athens after that. “We are being dragged into elections, elections that no one really wants,” said Pavlos Tzimas, a leading political commentator. “It’s not even in the interests of Syriza to have elections now when the political and economic landscape is so unsettled,” he told the Observer. “But if they do take place, Syriza will win and the real question is what will happen the next day, because come February the government will have only a few weeks to negotiate with the troika.”

With Greece facing debt repayments of almost €5bn in the first three months of 2015 alone, the spectre of a disorderly default looms once again.

What happens in parliament on Monday will not only define the course of Greece but of Europe. If Samaras wins, it will be a huge vote of confidence for a man who, despite being a critic of austerity, has implemented policies at the behest of other EU lenders to keep his country solvent. But if the presidential election fails to deliver his man, and snap polls are called as the Greek constitution stipulates, radical insurgents bent on overturning that order are on course to triumph. And with their message of resistance resonating across its southern periphery, Europe will never be the same again.

FIGHTING TALK

‘The terror they cause speaks for itself. They are trying to interrupt the country’s progress with the threat of early elections… citizens do not want elections and markets do not want elections’

– Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Syriza

‘I am willing to cooperate but I don’t think [Tsipras] is willing to be cooperative with me if he becomes prime minister. This a major danger for Greece … I don’t think he understands the problems of the country’

– Jean-Claude Juncker, European commission president

‘An operation of terror, of lies, is under way. An operation whose only aim is to sow terror among the Greek people and thrust the country ever deeper into poverty’

– Alexis Tsipras, Syriza leader

‘Everything is hanging by a thread … and if it is cut, it could lead to absolute catastrophe’

– Evangelos Venizelos, deputy PM