— Exit polls at 1500GMT, first results at 1830GMT
Voting started early Sunday where about half a million Greek Cypriots will elect the 56 new members of the House of Representatives.
Even though voting is mandatory, a 90% turnout is expected of the 500,606 registered on the electoral list, while many voters were slow to go the election centres as they stayed up late for the Eurovision song contest on Saturday night.
In all, 487 candidates are contesting a seat in the next four year term of parliament, a mainly legislative body with no executive powers as the island state’s president is elected by a direct vote.
The campaigning period focused primarily on the UN’s peace efforts, dubbed the “Annan Plan”, that was rejected by the Greek Cypriot side.
The ruling coalition parties focused their attacks on the opposition’s support of the plan two years ago, while the main opposition party, Democratic Rally (DISY), capitalised on the disagreements within the administration and criticised the present government of mismanaging the economy in the three years of office.
President Tassos Papadopoulos cast his vote in the village of Deftera, near his family farming estate but refrained from commenting on the prospects of the Democratic Party (DIKO) which he heads.
“This is the highest expression of democracy and the bloodline of political progress,” he said.
Asked by Turkish Cypriot journalists if the Greek Cypriot side would be changing its approach on the Cyprus problem after the elections, Papadopoulos said “I think the policy of the Greek Cypriot side is well known and correct. There is no reason for any dramatic change and I am confident in the people’s judgment.”
House President Demetris Christofias who is also Secretary General of the main coalition partner, communist AKEL, kept up the pace of negative campaigning evident throughout the pre election period by reviving old wounds saying that his party “has never harmed the Republic”, while it has frequently suggested that members of the opposition DISY were behind the 1974 coup that preceded the Turkish invasion.
Voting in a suburb of the capital Nicosia, Christofias is running on the party’s ticket as a refugee for the occupied town of Kyrenia.
However, DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades, a member of the European Popular Party executive council, kept a positive tone in his statements after casting his vote in the southern port city of Limassol.
“We need to work for unity and a vote for the opposition creates the right conditions for a better check of the government,” he said.
Voting started at 07.00 local time (0500 GMT) and will end at 17.00 (1500 GMT) with the first results of party strength expected at 20.30 (1830 GMT) and the final list of candidates early Monday morning.
AKEL and DISY are each expected to gain about 30 to 32% of the votes and some 19 or 20 seats each in a highly polarised society, while President Papadopoulos’ DIKO has been billed by pollsters as rising to 16 to 18% of the votes, winning up to ten seats in the new assembly.
Political analysts say that this outcome will also determine if Papadopoulos’ party will have enough public support to seek a second term in office in 2008, or whether coalition partner AKEL will have the upper hand and put forward its own candidate for president.
For the first time since the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 and the divisions that followed the bicommunal troubles in the 1960s, some 300 Turkish Cypriots are taking part in the parliamentary elections, but only one Turkish Cypriot candidate, poet Nese Yiasin, came forward on the smaller United Democrats’ ticket.
A further three non-voting seats are reserved for the ethnic and religious minorities of the Armenians, the Catholic Maronites, who hail from neighbouring Lebanon, and the Catholic Latins, who trace their roots to the Venetians who ruled the island up to the fifteenth century.
Cypriots who live abroad cannot vote in overseas election centres and the main political parties have subsidised special flights to allow some 10,000 overseas Cypriots and students to travel home and vote.
