IN THE END, the opinion polls did get one thing right – that it would be a very closely fought election.
However, only one of the 50-plus polls had found that Ioannis Kasoulides would finish top and none that President Papadopoulos would be eliminated from the first round – he had topped all the other polls. Despite the vote-buying social measures of the last few months, a lucrative campaign, the support of the television stations and contesting the election as president, Papadopoulos still finished third.
Yesterday’s result was an emphatic defeat of his sterile policy on the Cyprus problem, which, despite his protestations, was geared at maintaining the status quo. He was unwilling to take any initiative or to show the slightest hint of good faith in dealings with the other side, focusing all the government’s efforts on preventing ‘the upgrading of the status of the pseudo-state’, by the international community.
It is these policies, which have brought us perilously close to permanent partition, which were resoundingly defeated by the Greek Cypriot public yesterday. Only 31.75 per cent of the people approved Papadopoulos’ hard-line approach to the national problem. Two thirds of the country backed the more flexible and proactive policies on the national problem advocated by his two rivals who will be contesting Sunday’s run-off.
Demetris Christofias and Kasoulides have both pledged, if elected, to take the initiative, start talks with the Turkish Cypriot side and make proposals for breaking the deadlock. Whether they are successful will also depend on the Turkish side, but at least the big majority of the voters showed that they would like their president to have an honest shot at finding a settlement – something that Papadopoulos had proved he could not be relied upon to do.
We hope the two contestants for the presidency will adhere faithfully to this commitment in the coming week and avoid watering it down for the sake of securing the electoral backing of the hard-line parties that were in the Papadopoulos alliance.
There will be plenty of wheeler dealing and horse-trading with the defeated parties – EDEK, DIKO and EUROKO – in the next few days, as Christofias and Kasoulides try to strengthen their prospect of winning on Sunday.
Electoral alliances are inevitable, but the two candidates need to set limits on what they are prepared to offer other parties for their support. For far too long, the island’s two biggest parties have allowed the smaller parties to set the agenda, giving them much more power than their strength merited. It would be a step forward if the smaller parties had less of a say in next Sunday’s run-off.
This could only be achieved if Christofias and Kasoulides reached some form of understanding on the handling of the national problem and fought the election on other issues. Or are we going to witness the surfacing of big differences, which did not exist for the last six months, on Cyprus problem policy? This would be a mistake because if there is a new initiative, DISY and AKEL should be working together, irrespective of whose candidate become president.
