Greek Voters Fail to Elect Majority Government : Politics: An inconclusive outcome points to a power vacuum and further economic decline.

A country searching in economic distress for a new government failed again to find one Sunday when Greek national elections solidified a left-right stalemate.

Nearly complete returns in parliamentary voting early today mirrored results of an inconclusive June election in which conservatives wrested a plurality from socialist foes but fell tantalizingly short of the majority needed to form a one-party government.

All three parties reject long-term coalition with their foes, so the election aftermath likely means extension of a power vacuum amid further economic decline, and yet another election, in March or sooner.

With 94% of the vote counted, conservatives led by 71-year-old Constantine Mitsotakis had 46.45% of Sunday’s vote and 148 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, needing 151 seats to assure control. In the June vote, Mitsotakis’ New Democracy Party got 44.2% and 145 seats. “We are entering a very difficult phase at a time when the country’s problems can’t wait,” Mitsotakis told reporters early today. He said he would accept an exploratory mandate to attempt to form a government.

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement, called PASOK and led by disgraced former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, ran a strong second Sunday, winning 40.77% and 128 seats. In June, PASOK got 39.1% and 125 seats, losing majority control for the first time since 1981.

Papandreou hailed Sunday’s results as “a moral and political victory,” telling supporters early today, “The road is open for a democratic and progressive government.”

Indicted by Parliament on wiretapping and bribery charges since the last vote, Papandreou campaigned this time on a platform calling for more jobs, higher wages and better pensions.

Running third once again Sunday was the Coalition of the Left and Progress, consisting of Communists and far leftists, with 10.77% and 21 seats. Leftists outside the Coalition, one a member of the environmentalist Greens party, won two of the remaining seats, and a Greek Muslim took the third.

The Coalition, which got 13.1% and 28 seats last time, was abandoned Sunday by youthful hard-liners enraged by the Communist leader Harilaos Florakis’ willingness to form an odd-couple conservative-Communist interim government after the June vote.

The dissident Communists apparently switched Sunday to Papandreou, who has long urged unity on the left against the conservatives.

Most Greek Communists, though, are perestroika- shunning hard-liners who despise Papandreou. They joined with the conservatives for investigations that resulted in the charges against him and four of his senior ministers.

As planned, the coalition government resigned after voting to send Papandreou to trial, and Sunday’s election was held under the authority of a non-decision-making government of notables appointed by President Christos Sartzetakis and led by Supreme Court President Yannis Gravis.

Sunday’s individual victors included Mitsotakis’ daughter, Dora Bakoyannis, the 35-year-old widow of a conservative member of Parliament murdered by leftist terrorists in June. She easily won her husband Paul’s seat in an impoverished mountain district north of the capital.

Another conservative winner was Mikis Theodorakis, 64, the composer of “Zorba the Greek” who had served six years as a Communist deputy. He was elected this time as a conservative after switching parties in revulsion over the Bakoyannis murder.

Actress Melina Mercouri, 64, easily won a PASOK seat. For eight years she had been Greece’s minister of culture, Papandreou’s longest-serving Cabinet officer. Campaigning for him this time, she dismissed scandals that rocked Papandreou’s government, saying they were opponents’ attempts to destroy PASOK.

Papandreou, a former Berkeley economics professor who has dominated Greek political life for all of this decade, is accused of peddling influence and accepting bribes as part of a $200-million bank scandal and of authorizing illegal wiretaps on conversations of political enemies, friends--and Dimitra Liani, the 35-year-old former stewardess he married after a long and public courtship.

The autocratic Papandreou’s attention to the daily affairs of state appeared to stray last year amid failing health. In September, 1988, he had a triple bypass and an aortic valve transplant in London.

Sunday’s results augur more drift and disquiet for Greece at a time when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Community member can least afford it.

While the other 11 members of the European Community march in growing prosperity toward unity, Greece is sliding backward.

Greece is growing slower than the rest of the community, but its 15% inflation rate is three times the Common Market average. The richer Europeans are already propping up the Greek economy. Community funds earmarked for structural improvements and farm subsidies account for about 5% of the gross national product.

The Greek debt mushroomed under the free-spending Papandreou: It is now $52.7 billion, more than the anticipated 1989 total of the country’s goods and services.

Government expenses climbed to unprecedented levels in Papandreou’s tumultuous eight years, and the government’s deficit grew in proportion.