Nicosia, Feb. 6 (BNA): A centre-right former foreign minister and career diplomat backed by a communist-rooted party will battle for the presidency of ethnically-divided Cyprus in a run-off on Feb. 12, according to official voting results. Sunday announced.
With all votes counted in the first round of the presidential race, Nikos Christodoulides, 49, the country’s top former diplomat, had 32% to go into a runoff against Andreas Mavroyannis, 66, who put in a surprisingly strong performance with 29.6%.
Averof Neophyto, 61, leader of the Democratic Assembly (DISY), the country’s largest political party, trailed Mavroyannis by about 3.5 percentage points, despite previous polls putting him in second place, according to the Associated Press.
Senior returning official Costas Constantino said 72% of some 561,000 citizens cast ballots on Sunday, slightly higher than the previous presidential election in 2018. The winner of next week’s runoff will be the eighth new president of Cyprus in its 63-year history as an independent republic. .
Christodoulides, a longtime DISY member, has consistently led all the polls over the course of the months-long campaign, positioning himself as a candidate who can bridge party affiliations and ideological fault lines to unite a fractured electorate.
Speaking to his supporters, Christodoulides stressed the message of “unity” by being careful not to alienate any voters casting ballots for any other candidate. He said he would contact Neophyto for a meeting on Monday to secure his party’s support.
“From tomorrow our door is open to all those who share our concern about tomorrow, about our children,” said Christodoulides, surrounded by his wife and daughters.
But he looked into the communist-rooted AKEL party, which supports Mavroyannis’ candidacy. He said there would be no return to that party’s policies, which drove the island to near bankruptcy during the 2008-2013 presidential term of the former AKP leader, the late Dimitris Christofias.
Mavroyannis, who served under outgoing President Nikos Anastasiades as his chief negotiator in peace talks with the Turkish Cypriots, has raised alarm by challenging previous polls that showed him trailing Neophyto.
His message as an agent of change resonated with disaffected voters over a decade of Anastasiades’ rule, especially members of the Justice and Development Party.
Mavroyannis told a crowd of Cypriot flag-waving supporters that he would reach out to other candidates in the coming days to secure their support.
“Our love for our homeland eliminates any lines of division and unites us,” he said. “Our focus is on the goal of building a healthy and strong economy and our concern for our citizens supersedes our differences.”
Neophyto relied on his message as an insider’s most steadfast veteran to ensure stability in times fraught with economic uncertainty, building on the vigorous action of the government of which many of the DISY cadres were members. But the perception of Neophytou among a group of voters as an insider pulling strings tarnished by the outgoing administration’s faults seemed to hurt him at the ballot box.
Neophyto told his supporters at his campaign headquarters that he congratulated both Christodoulides and Mavroyannis on their success.
However, he dodged questions about which of his rivals he would throw his party’s support behind, saying such a decision would be reached collectively in line with party protocols while hinting that he would not step down as DISY chairmanship.
“We fought a tough fight under the most adverse political circumstances,” said Neophyto. “It wasn’t enough.”
Voter Andreas Machas said his vote went to the candidate he considered the “least bad” of the group.
Mashas told the Associated Press after casting his ballot, without revealing what his choice was.
Cypriots expect the new president to move quickly to shore up an economy battered by Russia’s war in Ukraine and its detrimental impact on the cost of living.
Immigration has also been a hot issue amid the continuing massive migrant flow that has made Cyprus one of the top EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications per capita.
Tapping into Cyprus’ offshore natural gas reserves amid the energy crisis and returning to the negotiating table with the separated Turkish Cypriots to resolve the island’s ethnic divide are also priority issues.