Parties may be falling in behind Christofias but party members may not follow directives
DESPITE the fact that the major political parties appear to be converging behind AKEL candidate Demetris Christofias, political analysts claim it’s all to play for in the run-off Presidential Elections on Sunday.
Electoral analyst Christoforos Christoforou and Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Nicosia Andreas Sophocleous both agree that Sunday’s outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion.
They focused on the inability of DIKO and EDEK to achieve high mobilisation rates.
“In the first round, significant percentages of DIKO and EDEK voters did not follow party directives in voting for President Tassos Papadopoulos. I expect the same to occur in the second round,” Sophocleous said.
He went on to predict that, “EDEK will show higher mobilisation rates than DIKO, since its voters had shown a preference for Christofias in the first round.”
“As concerns DIKO, however, I expect a sizeable percentage will stray from the stated party directives.”
Christoforou took the argument even further, claiming that, “it does not follow that because 68 per cent of DIKO’s central committee opted for Christofias, then the DIKO voters would do the same.”
In particular, Christoforou detected three groups of DIKO voters who would refuse to support Christofias.
“There exists a centre-right section of DIKO voters who would never go for a communist candidate, and the same can be said for the hardcore nationalists who backed Papadopoulos.”
“There are also those who regard Christofias as being the chief culprit responsible for ruining Papadopoulos’ chances for a second five-year stint, and therefore refuse to give him their vote.”
Christoforou estimated that, “it will be very difficult for DIKO to achieve a mobilisation of more than 75-80 per cent.
It was only in 1993 when DIKO supported DISY leader Glafcos Clerides, that DIKO’s mobilisation rates peaked.”
DIKO voters may be swayed to choosing Christofias because of his good chances for election, as well as their party retaining some power in government.
EDEK will also have trouble getting more of their voters to follow the party line.
“Not only do they have a centre-right cross-section of voters within the public, but they also have severe reliability issues to contend with”, said Christoforou.
Indeed, reliability and credibility issues lie at the core of the resurrected tripartite alliance between AKEL, DIKO and EDEK.
Despite AKEL spokesman Andros Kyprianou’s protestations yesterday that, “we are not witnessing the tripartite alliance being reborn”, people will have trouble stomaching the latest developments.
“How will DIKO and EDEK convince their voter base?” Christoforou quipped rhetorically.
“It’s not easy for the public to erase all that has been said and done over the past ten months of this extended election season,” Christoforou explained.
Christoforou hinted at the possibility that, “a temporary left-right polarisation of the electoral body might occur on Sunday,” as a flabbergasted electorate tries to make sense of what is going on.
“Therefore we should not be surprised in an increase in blank and/or spoiled votes.
“As much as five percent or more of the electorate might in this way express their dissatisfaction and/or their indecision when faced with a choice between DISY’s Ioannis Kasoulides and AKEL’s Demetris Christofias.”
Christoforou urged us not to forget that “there is one third of the electorate who do not belong to any party.”
