One of former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides and diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis will become Cyprus’ next president in the runoff election next Sunday, February 12.
According to the official results, frontrunner Christodoulides secured 32.04% of the votes (127,305), while 117,627 people voted for Mavroyiannis who received 29.6% of the votes.
Ruling Disy backed Averof Neophytou came third with 103,755 votes and a percentage of 26.11%.
Christodoulides is the first candidate in the history of the Cypriot democracy who goes through to the runoff election without having the backing of one of the two largest parties, right-wing Disy and left-wing Akel.
Mavroyiannis’s showing defied opinion polls which had shown he would likely trail in third place and would be left out of the runoff. But he had the backing of Akel, which had cranked up the rallying of its supporters in the past month.
“It comes down to Mavroyiannis having the full backing of a party and that Averof (Neophytou) probably didn’t,” Fiona Mullen of Sapienta Economics told Reuters, referring to third-placed Averof Neophytou, leader of the ruling right-wing DISY party. “Its an extraordinary result,” she added.
Neophytou had been publicly endorsed by incumbent President Anastasiades, who by law cannot seek a second five-year term, but his candidacy was overshadowed by Christodoulides, a party member who broke ranks with Disy to run.
Opinion polls had shown Christodoulides gaining roughly one-third of the DISY votes.
The two frontrunners from Sunday’s vote will now have a week to win over voters, after which the victor will have to wrestle with how to break a deadlock in reunification talks on ethnically split Cyprus, as well as with irregular migration, labour disputes, and repairing the country’s image tarnished by corruption scandals.
The full results are accessible here.
(This post will be updated)
