Cyprus: Far-right party gains big

The farright ELAM party and a centrist splinter group made big gains in Cyprus’ parliamentary election on Sunday as a sizeable chunk of supporters appeared to have turned their back on the top three parties amid voter disenchantment with traditional power centres.

With 100 per cent of votes counted, ELAM garnered 6.78 per cent of the vote — a 3 per cent increase from the previous election in 2016 — to edge out the socialist EDEK party by the razor-thin margin of around 200 votes. The centrist DIPA — made up of key figures from the centre-right DIKO party which has traditionally been the third biggest party — gained 6.1 per cent of the vote.

The centre-right DISY emerged in first place with 27.77 per cent of the vote, 5.4 per cent more than second-place, communist-rooted AKEL.

But the parties respectively lost 2.9 per cent and 3.3 per cent of their support from the previous election.

“The result isn’t what we expected,” AKEL General-Secretary Andros Kyprianou told a party rally. “We respect it and we'll examine it carefully to draw conclusions, but we can now say that we failed to convince (our supporters).”

Analyst Christoforos Christoforou said the results indicate a “very big failure” on the part of both DISY and AKEL to rally more supporters by convincing them of the benefits of their policies.

A last-ditch appeal by the DISY leadership limited a projected 5 per cent voter loss to 3 per cent.