ALMOST half a million Cypriots will vote in the February 8 elections, more than half of them women.
According to official figures released by the government, 446,731 Cypriots are eligible to vote, of which 219,313 are men and 227,418 women.
Of the total, 16,938 are new voters in the 18 to 20 age, allowed to vote after a change in the electoral law dropping the voting age from 21 to 18.
A poll released on Friday night claimed over 50 per cent of these first- time voters would vote for incumbent President Glafcos Clerides.
While there is a larger number of women voting overall, the difference is concentrated in the 50+ age group, with the biggest male/female gap among the over-70s, where women outnumber men by 34,555 to 27,339.
In the categories from 18 to 49, the majority of voters are men, though their lead is slight.
The largest group of voters – both male and female – is in the 30 to 39 category, making up 92,000 people – almost a fifth of the total.
Voting in Cyprus is compulsory and those who fail to do so can be fined or given a short prison sentence.
Voting on February 8 will take place at 1,023 polling stations around the island. Nicosia will have 379 centres, Limassol 318, Famagusta district 44, Larnaca 162 and Paphos 120.
Middle East church leader warn against rash actionsBy Hamza Hendawi IN A PASTORAL letter to their estimated 14 million followers, the heads and representatives of more than 30 Middle East churches gathered in Nicosia yesterday spoke of the problems facing Christians in the Muslim-dominated region, saying their dwindling number was a source of both sadness and concern.They also spoke of the need to boost the diminishing participation of Christians in public life and encourage the dialogue between Christians and Muslims to create a society where all citizens were treated equally.The letter was issued after Friday’s meeting of the Middle East Council of Churches to discuss the “challenges” facing Christians in the area.”Today, Christians face many problems which keep them from effective participation in public life, something which in turn gives rise to feelings of fear and anxiety,” said the letter. “But despite these problems, which test the presence of Christians and their faith, we urge our sons… to deal with the present situation in a spirit of objectivity and wisdom and free from exaggeration and scare-mongering.”But this does not mean that we should make light of the gravity of the situation and the need to deal with it,” said the pastoral letter, distributed in a news conference held at the Archbishopric yesterday.The letter also called for boosting the dialogue between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East as a means of “creating a society based on respect for multi-ethnicity and total equality among its citizens.”The pastoral letter appeared at pains to avoid details of the problems facing Middle East Christians or blame anyone for them.The role of Christians in society has traditionally been a thorny topic in the Arab world, often leading to questions of human and civil rights or controversial theological arguments on the place of non-Muslims in Muslim societies. Human right reports alleging discrimination against Christians by authorities in Arab countries are often dismissed out of hand as fictional or viewed with deep scepticism.”The heads of churches are trying to find a path through all the extremities which could give rise to panic among Christians. But this does not mean they are treating the problems lightly,” said one church official who participated in Friday’s meeting.High on the list of current Christian concerns in the overwhelmingly Muslim Arab world is the rapid decline in the number of Christians and what many believe to be their increasing political marginalisation.”The number of Christians is dwindling everywhere in the Arab world,” said Tarek Mitri, a Lebanese who deals with inter-religious relations at the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. “Everyone has been whispering about the decline in the numbers, but now it is being openly discussed,” he said.The 20th century saw hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians leaving for North America, Australia and Western Europe, mostly to seek a better life, but also to escape a Muslim revival which, in extreme cases, threatens to reactivate dormant Muslim tenets such as a special tax on non-Muslims.The pace of their departure has picked up in recent years with the rise in several Arab states of radical Muslim groups. Sectarian violence pitting Muslims against Christians in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war led tens of thousands of Lebanese Christians to leave, and Muslim militants fighting the Egyptian government since 1992 have frequently attacked Christians.Sudan’s Christian minority leaders and human rights reports have in recent years repeatedly accused the Islamic Khartoum government of engaging in an Islamisation programme targeting economically vulnerable groups, such as those who escaped fighting in the south of the country and sought refuse in largely Muslim areas in the north and west.
