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Lingo

In what has turned out to become a Political thriller which went down to the wire, Ioannis Kasoulidis and Dimitris Christofias are the two candidates which came through the first round of voting and at the same time push current President Tasos Papadopoulos out of the running.

 

Whilst it was expected the final results to come through at 8.30pm, eventually they came at around 7.30pm (19.30hrs) to put an early end to the immediate nervousness. 

 

Ioannis Kasoulidis (150,996 votes) upset the odds and the opinion polls to surge ahead and win by the tightest of margins, 980 votes separated the first two with President Papadopoulos, in third, getting 6,767 votes less than Mr. Christofias. Of the other candidates, EuroMP Marios Matsakis led the way with Costas (Outopos) Kostas behind him. The other four candidates did not manage to get even 800 votes each and finally a large percentage of people (10.38%) did not vote. The total number of voters in Cyprus for these elections stands at 516,441.

 

Now as to why such a turn around occurred, the reason is simply down to the number of students and other voters abroad returning back to Cyprus to vote which obviously could not be accounted for in local opinion polls beforehand. What is also interesting to see, was the massive difference in votes in the Famagusta area which covers Ayia Napa, Paralimni, Protaras and other nearby villages. Of the 28,191 voters registered, 11,692 (46.56%) of them voted for Ioannis Kasoulidis, whilst Dimitris Christofias took 33.41% and the President only 18.71% of the votes. None of the others managed to get 1% of the votes in the whole area whilst 2,320 voters (8.23%) decided not to vote.

 

So, next Sunday will see either Mr. Kasoulidis or Mr. Christofias as the new President of Cyprus with the next 2 days critical for both of them as they battle to gain support from other political parties.