Cyprus picks new president amid economic doubt and ethnic split

NICOSIA, Cyprus—cypriots are voting Sunday for a new president who they’ll expect to decisively steer the small island nation through shifting geopolitical sands and uncertain economic times that have become people’s overriding concern, eclipsing stalemated efforts to remedy the country’s ethnic division.

The monthslong campaign has been a lackluster affair, primarily because the three leading candidates are all close associates of outgoing President Nicos Anastasiades and so their battles have centered on trying to persuade voters that they’re not all cut from the same cloth.

At the same time, they’ve been angling for votes from across ideological lines by trying to evade the long shadow cast by the right-wing Anastasiades, whose detractors have accused him of enabling corruption to fester through his two-term, 10-year tenure. Anastasiades has vehemently denied the allegations.

From a record field of 14 candidates, the frontrunners include Averof Neophytou, the leader the center-right, pro-business Democratic Rally (DISY) Party, which Anastasiades previously led; and Nikos Christodoulides, a former foreign minister and government spokesman in Anastasiades’ administration. The third main candidate is Andreas Mavroyiannis, a former diplomat and Anastasiades’ lead negotiator with breakaway Turkish Cypriots in peace negotiations.

Opinion polls indicate that none of the three will muster more than half of the votes—the bar for an outright win in the first round. Instead, the top two will likely move forward to a runoff a week later. Some 561,000 citizens are eligible to vote.

Opinion polls have consistently given Christodoulides a lead of as much as 10 points over Neophytou and Mavroyiannis, meaning he likely take one spot in the runoff, while the others are battling neckand-neck for the other one.

The ‘anastasiades connection’ has been a central theme for voters, but also for the president himself, who boasted in a recent interview with leading daily Phileleftheros that he feels “to a measure vindicated” in his leadership by the fact that three of his associates are vying to succeed him.