Monitoring Desk
NICOSIA: Cyprus voters Sunday elected the former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides as the youngest president of the small EU member state, election officials said, with his rival conceding defeat.
Christodoulides won 51.92 percent, a total of 204,680 votes, against Andreas Mavroyiannis, who took 48.08 percent, the government election service announced.
On Sunday, former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides was elected president of the Republic of Cyprus.
The seasoned politician secured 51.92 percent of the vote in a run-off on Sunday, closely defeating communist-backed career diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis who managed 48.08 percent of ballots.
Widely tapped as a favourite even ahead of last Sunday’s first round of voting, Nikos Christodoulides is seen as an independent backed by centrist political parties that take a hard line on moribund UN-backed negotiations on ending the island’s decades-old division.
His candidature sparked a split within the conservative ruling DISY political party, whose candidate Averof Neofytou was forced out of the race after coming in third place during the first round of voting — a first in the party’s history.
Christodoulides served as govt spokesman and foreign minister of Cyprus
Christodoulides served as government spokesman and then foreign minister under outgoing President Nicos Anastasiades; however, he quit as foreign minister last June to enter the race.
Later, Christodoulides found himself in the uncomfortable position of wooing votes from the DISY party after Neofytou failed to make the run-off.
DISY party would usually be expected to urge its supporters to vote against a communist-supported candidate, but Christodoulides is despised by many in the DISY party as a “traitor” who put personal ambition over the party and the island’s interests.
Christodoulides has also pledged a “zero-tolerance” approach to corruption as the island continues to deal with the fallout from a cash-for-passports scandal that plagued the previous administration.
Despite being a foreign minister in that cabinet, he escaped untainted by the scandal.
He ruffled feathers last September by blocking a European Union (EU) plan to sanction Belarus, saying Cyprus would only agree if the EU also sanctioned Turkiye.
The former foreign minister also faces criticism for his failure to take a clear stance on sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, making him criticized for his so-called pro-Moscow position.
Cyprus has, for several years, been home to a reasonable number of Russians.
Another critical issue that Christodoulides has vowed to tackle is the topic of migration on the island, where six percent of the 915,000 people in the south are asylum seekers.
