Patriots win big in Cyprus vote | Election news

Conservative authorities appear to be the winners, but do not get an absolute majority when voters turn to smaller parties.

The far-right ELAM party and a group of centrist groups have won big elections in the Cypriot parliamentary elections, with a large part of the supporters turning their backs on the first three parties in their dissatisfaction with the usual power centers.

With 100 percent of the vote counted, ELAM garnered 6.78% of the vote on Sunday — up 3 percent from the previous 2016 election — to keep the Socialist Party EDE out of the top 200 votes.

The centrist DIPA – traditionally made up of the most important figures of the center-right party DIKO, which has traditionally been the third party – received 6.1% of the vote.

The center-right DISY came in first with 27.77% of the vote, 5.4% more than the communist-rooted AKEL second place.

But the parties lost 2.9% and 3.3% of the previous election, respectively.

“The result is not what we expected,” AKEL general secretary Andros Kyprianou said at a party appearance. “We respect and look carefully to draw conclusions, but now we can say that we are not convinced (our supporters).”

‘Very big failure’

Christoforos Christoforou, an analyst, said the results indicate a “very big failure” on the part of DISY and AKEL to gather more supporters, convincing them of the benefits of their policies.

The latest appeal filed by DISY management limited voter loss by 5% to 3 percent.

Christoforou said the real winners have been ELAM with its strict anti-migration platform and tough nationalist policies and that the top levels of DIPA are still linked to centers of political power as former ministers and legislators.

He said the high election threshold of 3.6 per cent means that 15,000 voters who voted for smaller parties who did not get any seats are left without a voice in parliament.

Polls in the weeks leading up to the vote indicated that DISY and AKEL would withdraw support as disappointed voters seek alternatives among small parties.

The election will not affect the government’s position on the divided national island of the Mediterranean, as the executive branch is in the hands of a separately elected president.

Nearly 55.73% of the nearly 558,000 elected voters voted for the 56 Greek Cypriot seats in parliament. Voters were 1 percent less likely than in the previous poll.

Andros Kyprianou, AKEL General Secretary, votes [Andreas Andreou/PIO/AFP]

Among the key campaign issues were the country’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the expected economic resumption as the country intensified vaccinations.

Migration has also been a problem, as the Cypriot government has pushed its borders and stressed that it can no longer receive more migrants.

The smaller parties voted to turn their backs on voters for DISY, who said it was burdened with a legacy of corruption.

An independent investigation into the now-defunct citizenship investment program in Cyprus has found that the government has issued illegal passports to thousands of relatives of wealthy investors, some of whom have a dark past.

An Al Jazeera research they found that several senior Cypriot officials, politicians, lawyers and real estate developers were involved in a scheme that allowed criminals to purchase a European passport using a citizenship investment program.