He's been trying to create a crisis while at the same time pinning the blame on Syriza. That works on Serious People who already believe Syriza is the Devil. And they may well manufacture a repeat of the 2010 Greek crisis.

See also Macropolis: How snap elections in Greece fit into Samaras's strategy - See more at: http://www.macropolis.gr/?i=portal.en.the-agora.2062#sthash.pbxzEW8S.dpuf (29 December 2014)

Snap elections in Greece have been on the cards for a while. Every move made by the government in recent months (negotiations with the troika in Paris, the early bailout exit plan, calling a sudden vote of confidence and moving the date of the presidential vote forward by two months) have been vain attempts to put off the inevitable. There was never a convincing case that the coalition's candidate would be able to gather the minimum 180 votes needed and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's half-hearted attempts to offer a potentially game-changing compromise over the past week were far too little, too late.

...

At this point, Samaras made what was a deeply political calculation: He realised that passing the latest clutch of troika demands through Parliament would guarantee that his government had no chance of electing a president in February and would force it to go to national polls having only just approved a new round of unpopular measures. In these circumstances, bringing forward the presidential vote gave the coalition a slightly better chance of success or, if snap elections were not avoided, meant that a SYRIZA or SYRIZA-led government would be left with the task of closing out the troika negotiations.

...

So, if SYRIZA wins a January 25 election it will have around a month in which to ensure the election of a president, find political allies that do not yet exist, form a government for the first time in its history and reach some kind of settlement with the troika before the extension to the current bailout ends on February 28, leaving Greece in serious danger of being unable to meet its debt obligations over the next few months. Even if SYRIZA overcomes these hurdles, it will still have to put its demands for debt relief and economic stimulus to the country's lenders, while running the risk of alienating them by fulfilling its pre-election promises of wage and pension rises.

And, of course, pressure is already being applied as if following a plan: IMF suspends aid to Greece until snap election is completed (Deutsche Welle, 29.12.2014)

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman