Left leapfrogs right, poll shows

By Martin Hellicar

A POLL published yesterday suggests main opposition party Akel is slightly ahead of governing Disy in the popularity stakes.But the survey — conducted by Amer research for Politisnewspaper — shows a narrowing of the gap between the two main parties. It also indicates that Diko is regaining some of the ground it lost after the February 1998 Presidential elections.Disy won 20 of the 56 seats in the House of Representatives in the last parliamentary elections in 1996, one more than Akel. The party then successfully backed President Clerides’ re-election campaign in 1998. But since then, the S-300 missiles fiasco and a string of corruption scandals have hit the government’s image hard, affecting the ruling party’s standing.In a similar poll carried out by Amer in February, only two months after the government gave in and redirected the S-300 missiles to Crete, right-wing Disy were three percentage points behind communist Akel.Yesterday’s poll, in which 864 people over 18 were questioned, suggested Akel would secure 34.9 per cent and Disy 32.2 per cent of the vote should voting for a new parliament take place today.Diko would garner 13.3 per cent of the vote, a significant improvement on their showing in the February Amer survey, the poll showed.Spyros Kyprianou’s centre-right party won a respectable ten seats in 1996, but has been doing badly ever since. The ill-fated decision to abandon a coalition with Disy in order to join Akel in backing challenger George Iacovou in the 1998 presidential elections and a series of high- profile defections have done Diko no favours.Socialist Edek would get 11.3 per cent of the vote and George Vassiliou’s United Democrats 3.2 per cent, the poll suggested.

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