Cypriots go to polls to pick president

CYPRIOTS are voting to choose a president after an election campaign focused on the economy and the divided island’s suspended peace process.

Polling stations opened at 7am yesterday and will close at 6pm, with a 60minute break at noon.

550,000 people have the right to vote in the poll, which is contested by an all-male line-up of nine presidential hopefuls seeking a fixed five-year term in office.

If, as expected, no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the vote, a runoff will be held between the top two challengers a week from yesterday.

Incumbent President Nicos Anastasiades, of the right-wing Democratic Rally party, is projected to win the first round, after leading all opinion polls in the run-up to the vote.

His closest challengers are Stavros Malas, an independent candidate backed by the communist party AKEL, and centrist Nicolas Papadopoulos, chairman of the Democratic Party.

The two opposition leaders are expected to fight neck-to-neck for the second place, which will secure one of them a spot in the February 4 runoff. Christos Christou, of ELAM, a far-right party described as a copycat version of Greece’s Golden Dawn that won two seats in Cyprus’s 56-member parliament in a 2016 election, is tipped to compete for the fourth place with Giorgos Lillikas, who scored a surprise third place in the last presidential vote five years ago.