Limassol and the state challenge recount

Both Limassol Mayor Nicos Nicolaides and the state intend to file objections to a request for a recount of the ballots of last December’s mayoral election that was filed by Akel after its candidate, incumbent Andreas Christou, lost by just nine votes.

The two sides have until March 20 to file their objections.

“The court will eventually decide on this application, whether it can be supported by the facts legally, as well as in reality,” Nicolaides’ lawyer Simos Angelides said.

Akel and others supporting the appeal, argue that there was no uniformity on the criteria applied by the over 100 polling station supervisors regarding null votes.

They claim there was evidence pointing to a number of ballots ticked for Christou being erroneously marked as void.

In other cases, they said, ballots which should have been marked as void were instead counted for Nicolaides.  The plaintiffs stressed they were not implying there was malice.

Lawyer Stavros Pavlou, representing Christou’s side, suggested that the objections were a politically wrong act.

“The recount is not a legal point; it is a real event that will confirm the election or not,” he said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.