Elections in Cyprus

Elections in Cyprus gives information on election and election results in Cyprus.

Cyprus elects on national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. The president is elected for a five year term by the people. The House of Representatives (Vouli Antiprosópon/Temsilciler Meclisi) has 59 members, 56 members elected for a five year term by proportional representation and 3 members representing the Maronite, Roman-Catholic and Armenian minorities. 24 seats are allocated to the Turkish minority. Northern Cyprus elects also a president and a legislature. The president is elected for a five year term by the people. The House of Representatives (Temsilciler Meclisi) has 50 members, elected for a five year term by mitigated proportional representation. Both Cyprus and Northern Cyprus have a multi-party system, with two or three strong parties and a third party that is electorally successful.

Last elections

To be added

Past elections

The british colonial administration drafted a constitution for Cyprus a few years after Cyprus was bought from the ottomans (1878). The legislative assembly was to have 9 greek cypriot members, 3 turkish cypriot members (all elected) and 6 british ex officio members. The vote of the british head of the assembly weighted more in case of a 50%-50% disagreement. Thus traditionally the turkish cypriot and british members would cooperate and pass legislation despite the disagreements of the greek cypriot members. In 1931 Necati Bey, a turkish cypriot supporter of Kemal Attaturk was elected (in previous years turkish cypriot members werehailed from the ottoman ruling class). Necati Bey agreed with the greek cypriot members on several issues. This made the british governor, Sir Ronald Storrs to ignore the assembly when passing the bills. Angry greek cypriot members started a riot and the constitution was abolished.

The first municipal elections happened in 1943. 2 of the winner mayors were members of AKEL: Ploutis Servas in Limassol and Adam Adamantos in Famagusta, and the other six where greek nationalists. In 1946 the situation was reversed: 6 were either members or supported by AKEL, including Ioannis Klerides in Nicosia.

The first presidential elections for independent Cyprus took place in 1960. The bulk of EOKA supporters were infavour of Makarios III, whereas AKEL backed Ioannis Kleridis (father of Glafkos Klerides). Klerides was also backed by independent politicians, both leftwingers like Ploutis Servas and right wingers like Themistoklis Dervis. The turkish cypriot community elected Fazil Küçük for the position of vice president.

President Makarios distanced himself from his earlier enosis convictions in his 1968 presidential campaign and argued for the independence of Cyprus. He declared that Enosis was wishable but independence was possible. His opponent was the psychiatrist Takis Evdokas who was campaigning for Enosis. Makarios won the election. Turkish Cypriots were mot participating in the government (see Cyprus dispute) but they had separate elections were Fazil Küçük was reelected as vice president,

In 1973 Makarios was reelected. Rauf Denktash was elected vice president.

Following the death of Makarios in 1977, Spyros Kyprianou became the president until the following election.

In the 1978 election, Glafkos Klerides was backed by his party, Democratic Rally whereas Spyros Kyprianou was backed by the other greek cypriot parties. Following the kidnapping of Kyprianou's son, Achilleas, Klerides did not run for the election and Kyprianou won.

In 1983 Kyprianou's Democratic Party (Cyprus) forged an alliance with AKEL based on an agreed agenda: the so called minimum program. Kyprianou was reelected in the presidential elections of that year.

By 1985 AKEL was not satisfied with Kyprianou's policies, especially his position in negotiations (see Cyprus dispute for more) and the partnership collapsed. AKEL found its new candidate for the 1988 election in George Vasiliou who managed to get to the second round of elections together with Glafkos Klerides. Kyprianou did not get enough votes. With the added support of EDEK, whose candidate Vasos Lyssaridis did not do very well in the first round, Vasiliou won the second round.

While the democratic Rally had been supporting Vasiliou in negotiating the Ghali set of ideas, as the 1993 elections were approaching it started criticising Vasiliou for not demanding enough. At the same time a partnership of Kyprianou's democratic party and Lyssaridis's EDEK was rejecting the spirit of the Ghali ideas all together and argued that both Vasiliou and Klerides were equally willing to compromise. The partnership got strong support by the church and its candidate was Paschalis Paschalidis.

Paschalidis didn't make it to the second round, however the democratic party made an agreement with Klerides and supported him. Thus Klerides was elected in 1993, forming a government with members of both democratic rally and the democratic party.

The main issue of the 1998 election campaign was the purchace of S-300 antiaircraft missiles from Russia. Klerides was backed by EDEK whereas the democratic party and AKEL were backing George Iacovou, ex minister in the Kyprianou and Vasiliou governments. Klerides won the election.

For the 2003 election EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou declared himself candidate and the democratic rally initially backed him. Because of the course of negotiations Clerides asked to remain president for another couple of years, so the democratic rally backed him. This made EDEK turn to the opposition coalition already formed between AKEL and democratic party. The leader of the latter, Tassos Papadopoulos was chosen as a candidate. In the meantime the attorney general Alekos Markides disagreed with his pary, democratic rally and ran as an independent candidate. Papadopoulos won from the first round.

See also

• Electoral calendar
• Electoral system

External links

• Electionworld
• Electionworld (North Cyprus)
• Adam Carr's Election Archive
• Adam Carr's Election Archive (North Cyprus)
• Parties and elections