Cypriots are voting Sunday for a new president who they’ll expect to decisively steer the small island nation through shifting geopolitical sands and uncertain economic times that have become people’s overriding concern.
NICOSIA, Cyprus—Cypriots are voting Sunday for a new president who they’ll expect to decisively steer the small island nation through shifting geopolitical sands and uncertain economic times that have become people’s overriding concern, eclipsing stalemated efforts to remedy the country’s ethnic division.
From a record field of 14 candidates, the frontrunners include Averof Neophytou, the leader the center-right, pro-business Democratic Rally Party, which Anastasiades previously led; and Nikos Christodoulides, a former foreign minister and government spokesman in Anastasiades’ administration. The third main candidate is Andreas Mavroyiannis, a former diplomat and Anastasiades’ lead negotiator with breakaway Turkish Cypriots in peace negotiations.
The ‘Anastasiades connection’ has been a central theme for voters, but also for the president himself, who boasted in a recent interview with leading daily Phileleftheros that he feels “to a measure vindicated” in his leadership by the fact that three of his associates are vying to succeed him. A career diplomat with a successful track record, Mavroyiannis, 66, is running as an independent but has the backing of the communist-rooted AKEL party. Although AKEL is the island’s second-largest party, the ill-fated presidential tenure of its late leader Dimitris Christofias 15 years ago that critics said brought the island to near-bankruptcy continues to burden the party and, to a degree, Mavroyiannis himself.
Who wins will have to contend—like many other EU leaders—with an economy buffeted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and its knock-on effect on the cost of living. Cyprus has posted economic growth, but opinion polls show a widespread public unease over high inflation.
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