Opinion - Editorials

Cyprus’s new president

The convincing victory of the communist candidate over his centre-right opponent in the presidential elections of Cyprus means Demetris Christofias becomes the first communist head of state in the European Union. The surprise outcome of Sunday’s runoff followed a narrow first-round lead for the right-wing candidate, Yiannakis Kassoulides, Member of the European Parliament and former foreign minister of Cyprus. Mr. Christofias won by 53.36 per cent to 46.64 per cent, largely because the party that used to be headed by the outgoing president, Tassos Papadopoulos, decided — after severe internal disagreement — to support the communist candidate in the second round. Speaker of the Cyprus Parliament and general secretary of the country’s Communist Party, Mr. Christofias has abandoned his earlier euroscepticism and now supports EU citizens’ rights as part of a continuing campaign for the poor.

As to the reactions and implications, it is highly unlikely, even if extreme members of the Bush administration might entertain the thought, that the United States will repeat Henry Kissinger’s 1970 comment about the elected socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” Instead the key question is that of contemporary Europe’s oldest conflict, the division of Cyprus that followed the Turkish invasion of 1974 to crush a coup backed by the military dictatorship in Greece. Furthermore, the domestic mood in southern, predominantly Greek, Cyprus is now very different from that encouraged by Mr. Papadopoulos in 2004, when barely a month before acceding to the EU, Cyprus overwhelmingly rejected a United Nations plan for reunification. Today most southern Cypriots want a resumption of talks with northern Cyprus, as do their President-elect and the runner-up. The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, has congratulated the new President. Nevertheless, the Turkish government’s response could be decisive. It was greatly angered by the previous Cypriot government’s repeated and promise-breaking obstructionism over EU-Turkish negotiations, and must now consider how to reciprocate the new conciliatory mood in southern Cyprus. Turkey and all of Cyprus stand to gain much from mutual cooperation over Cyprus’s reunification. In this context, it can only be hoped that Turkey’s unilateral attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan do not complicate matters further. The European Union, for its part, badly needs an international policy success and must do all it can to assist the new President of Cyprus in the constructive course he has promised.

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