The days between the two rounds of any given Cypriot Presidential election have always been a liminal space. Promising trajectories have been dashed, unholy alliances have been made, strong statements of a mere week ago have been reversed in impressive kolotoumbes—a volte-face of opinion made famous by Alexis Tsipras’s reversal following of the 2015 anti-austerity referendum—that were a thing in Cyprus long before the term was popularised through Greece. With Cyprus being the only fully presidential system government in the European Union, the President functions both as a Head of State and Head of Government. The current President Nicos Anastasiades (DISY-EPP) is constitutionally barred from being re-elected due to already serving two terms.
The first round of the election brought on some expected and some unexpected results. As expected by the large number of polls that kept increasing in numbers ahead of the election, former Foreign Minister of the DISY’s government Nicos Christodoulides led the pack, with former negotiator and diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis (*) and DISY leader Averof Neophytou battling for the second place.
Christodoulides–who runs as an independent while being supported by DIKO and EDEK (S&D), DIPA (RE) and Solidarity (NI)—came comfortably first with 32.04% and 127,309 votes. However, Mavroyiannis (running as independent with the support AKEL-LEFT) performed better than expected, coming closer to Christodoulides than polls predicted (29.59% or 117,551 votes) and Neophytou was left out of the runoff with 26.11% of the vote (103,748).
Neophytou came close to the result his party got in the last legislative election, but the lowest a candidate from his party has ever achieved in a presidential election, since a significant share of DISY voters picked Christodoulides, a former minister and spokesperson under the Anastasiades’ DISY government. Meanwhile Christodoulides, who had his membership of DISY stripped of him after deciding to run despite the party decision to pick Neophytou as its candidate, received the lowest percentage a first-round winner has ever received in a two-round election.
The storyline of the week between the two rounds was dominated by the spectacular implosion of DISY following the first round of the election, when President Anastasiades called a meeting at the Presidential Palace on the same night. According to media reports, the simmering conflict between Anastasiades and Neophytou came to a head as the President is said to have advocated for the party rallying behind Christodoulides.
However, during a tumultuous party meeting on Tuesday that ran past midnight, a significant number of high-profile members of DISY advocated for the party to support Mavroyiannis. The party finally decided to call on its members to vote freely, with the condition that whatever happens DISY will not participate in a coalition with either candidate. This move freed several officials such as current Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides to express his support for Mavroyiannis and a significant number of others to signal, without openly stating it, their support to the candidate supported by the left-wing AKEL.
Meanwhile, Mavroyiannis has sought to convince voters that AKEL will not have a deciding voice on issues related to the economy, addressing both DISY voters and those that abstained during the first round. Mavroyiannis and his team are aware that Christodoulides has the advantage when it comes to numbers, as he expects to draw support from DISY voters as well as ELAM (NI) voters. The far-right party has called for its supporters to vote at will in the second round.
This is the first time that a scenario of a grand coalition between the centre-right DISY and left-wing AKEL, which has often been floated as an idea but has never been seen as realistic, is being discussed in a way that makes it appear feasible. However, this is not the breakthrough that is taking shape in these elections, at least not just yet.
Especially after President Anastasiades, tarnished by associations with multiple corruption scandals, signalled his support to Christodoulides, once on election night and once again on Friday, the field has crystalised along two poles. Christodoulides counts on his more polished communication strategy, and his focus on youth and economic development, while being criticised for occasionally vague and conservative approaches in the Cyprus Problem and for being supported by a range of conservative and ultra-conservative parties and personalities. Mavroyiannis counts on his diplomatic experience, calm demeanour, and consciously progressive messaging. On the other hand he has been criticised for being supported by AKEL, which the public still eyes warily since the 2013 banking crisis.
The political scene in Cyprus has been fractured. For the first time, after 10 years of DISY and Anastasiades dominance, the result of the second round of a Presidential election is far from certain.
