Communist Elected President of Cyprus

On Sunday evening, Eleftheria stadium was not only bedecked with the green flags of Omonia, the Nicosia soccer club, but also with the red flags of AKEL and the white flags of Cyprus, and there were banners with images of Che Guevara and of the AKEL secretary general, Dimitris Christofias, the winner of Sunday’s presidential election. For the first time in AKEL’s history, instead of backing the candidate of another party, AKEL’s communists ran their own candidate and won the election. This is a first in the history of the European Union, where for the moment no other country is headed by a communist.

The biggest party on the island.

Following a tight first round of elections, in which the three main candidates obtained between 31% and 33% of the vote, in the second round Dimitris Christofias obtained 53.36% of the vote against 46.63% for his rival, Ioannis Kossoulides, the candidate of the conservative Democratic Unity (DISY) party. Christofias won by a 33,000 vote margin.

In the second round of the election, Dimitrias Christofias was backed by the three parties that supported outgoing president Tassos Papadopoulos, who was eliminated in the first round. Papdopoulos had rejected Khofi Annan’s peace plan to reunify the island in 2004, a plan which provides for the withdrawal of the Turkish army, but not before 2018.

Upon election, Dimitris Christofias made his primary objective the reunification of the island, which has been divided since 1974, when the Turkish army occupied the northern part of the island following a coup d’état staged by Greek Cypriots, who demanded unification of the island with Greece. In a speech made after the election results were announced, the new president said : “I hold out the hand of friendship and cooperation to Turkish Cypriots and to their leaders. I call on them to work together with us for the common good of the people, in a climate of peace.” Christofias also hailed his counterpart in the Turkish republic of northern Cyprus : “I would like to thank the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat who rang me to congratulate me.” Talat’s Republican Party maintains very tight relations with AKEL. “We regard this change as an opportunity and we hope that negotiations will begin immediately, without unnecessary preliminaries,” the spokesman for the northern part of the island, Hasan Ercakica, said.

Many foreign capitals hailed this development. Great Britain, the former colonial power on Cyprus, congratulated Dimitris Christofias on his election, as did the United States and Greece. In a communiqué, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said : “I strongly encourage you to seize this opportunity and to begin, without delay negotiations and under the auspices of the United Nations, negotiations on an overall agreement with the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community. As president of the European Commission I will back your joint efforts.”

A victory that pleases the French Communist Party.

With the renewal of negotiations, the European Union hopes to free up certain subsidies allocated to the northern part of the island and to create the conditions for the recognition of Kosovo by the Republic of Cyprus. For his party, the spokesman for the UN on Cyprus, José Diaz, said : “He [Christofias] clearly said he wants to push the process forward quickly and is holding out his hand to Turkish Cypriots.” In France, the French Communist Party declared itself “happy at this clear victory (...) of the general secretary of the Cypriot Communist Party.” The communiqué also stated that “This remarkable success opens a new period for the Cypriot people, for its social expectations and for settling the Cypriot question.”