Greek Cypriot Presidential Election First Round Results

Well later than I hoped I'm going to blog a bit about the Greek Cypriot election results.

To my utter surprise Papadapolous came third. Just goes to show, don't trust opinion polls, and if they're tight don't trust them especially.

As such its Kasoulides, the conservative, versus Christofias, the communist. If Christofias is elected President it will be Cyprus' first communist President. I think the voters of the centre could split either way personally. It'll be an interesting second round, but I think Kasoulides has the edge, then again I also thought Papadapolous was going to win it, so what do I know.

As a centre-left type I'm not actually sure who I'd prefer. On the lighter side, for those wanting a solution to the Cyprus situation both Christofias and Kasoulides are considered to be more willing to compromise with the Turkish North than the, ironically centrist, Papadapolous.

The second round is Sunday.

Greek Cypriot Presidential Election

There is an election in Cyprus on the 17th of Feb, next Tuesday essentially.

As is well known Cyprus was partitioned in the 1970s into a Greek part and a 2/5ths Turkish part (which has since been run by a government calling itself 'The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' which is only recognised by Turkey and not by anyone else in the international community) this was due to a series of events primarily due to fear of AKEL, the Progressive Party of Working People's, a communist party. This led to a coup from right wing Greek Cypriots , the Turks then declared they had to defend their population and sent troops to the island to protect their Turkish Cypriot brothers. The details of this is all very debatable however, as in most ethnic conflicts, and if you are interested it is best to do some independent research. The consensus in the international community is that Cyprus must be reunified, but how is a subject for much debate. In 2004 a referendum was called in both parts of the island on the 'Annan Plan' a plan, to reunify the island negotiated by, as the name suggests, then secretary-general Kofi Annan. While the Turks accepted the plan the Greeks rejected it, seeing it as giving far too much away to the Turks.

How important is this election for Cyprus? The answer is 'very', Cyprus is at a crossroads, this is the first election since Cyprus joined the EU, and they are making steps towards reconcilliation again with the North after the failure of the Annan Plan. Cyprus runs a Presidential system, like the United States, and as such the President is both head of state and of government and has a wide-ranging set of powers.

Lets have a look at the latest poll data:

Papadopoulos: 31%

Christofias: 30.5%

Kasoulides: 27.5% 

Source: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/29854/greek_cyprus_ballot_remains_too_close_to_call

So who are these three blokes? Papadopoulos is the current President, he is from the Democratic Party (DIKO), a centrist moderate party, he is also supported by EDEK, the Movement of Social Democrats, which as the name suggests is a centre-left party. Recently DIKO and EDEK have been working closely together with the much larger and more powerful AKEL. This started when DIKO and EDEK supported Christofias up there for the post of President of the House of Representatives, the Cypriot Parliament. The three parties form a majority in the Cypriot Parliament (AKEL has the largest number of seats, followed by DIKO which is the third largest party, and lastly EKEL has a smattering of seats), after Christofias' election the three parties all agreed to support Papadopoulos for the Presidency, and then formed a coalition cabinet (where members of all three parties are represented in the cabinet) after he was easily elected. Recently the coalition has split over this very election. AKEL wanted Christofias to be the united candidate. DIKO and EKEL rejected his candidature leading to AKEL leaving the coalition.

The third candidate, Kasoulides is from the largest opposition party, the Democratic Rally (DISY). It has the same number of seats as AKEL in Parliament (though it received slightly less of the vote) and is a centre-right party. As you can see from the polling data we have a practical tie on our hands in terms of popular support.

Under Cypriot law one must acheive 50%+1 votes in the Presidential election to be elected, as we can see that's not going to happen, so what happens instead? One week later a second round will be held where the top two candidates compete for a simple majority. If, as is likely, Papadopoulos gets through it is likely he will win. Why? It is simple really. If Christofias makes it through DISY will vote for Papadopoulos to keep a communist out of the Presidency. Similarly AKEL voters would easily rather Papadopoulos than Kasoulides. What if he doesn't though? Kasoulides versus Christofias would require the voters of DIKO to make the decision, and they could split either way.

Whichever candidate eventually manages to get elected though we have an issue of government formation. Cyprus has a proportionally elected legislature, which means that no party has a realistic chance of forming a majority on its own. This means parties must work together to pass legislation. If Christofias or Kasoulides are elected will they be forced to bring DIKO and other elements into the government? They will definitely have to reach far-reaching compromises with DIKO, if Papadopoulos wins will all be forgotten and the tripartite government be renewed? Or is the AKEL-DIKO era of cooperation over? These questions will have to be answered in the near future.

Welcome!

Hello, I just thought I'd start a quick introduction, my name is Chris Terry and I am a 3rd year student of International Relations with Politics at the University of Plymouth in England. I am deeply interested in politics in other states, and the internal issues surrounding them, and am deeply interested in elections particularly. In this blog I hope to track elections around the world and visit the issues surrounding the elections in order to enlighten people on them. Not that I expect many people to actually read this, but it would be nice to hope that a few do.