Exit polls show right-left split in Cypriot election

An exit poll on Cypriot state television predicted a tie between communists AKEL and right wing DISY in today’s parliamentary election, the war-divided island’s first vote since Greek Cypriots rejected – and Turkish Cypriots backed - a UN peace plan two years ago.

According to state-run CYBC, both parties tied with 32.7 percent, ahead of the centre Democratic Party, or DIKO, headed by President Tassos Papadopoulos with 17.5%.

The election affects only the balance of power in parliament. The government - chosen by the president, who is elected on a five-year mandate in a separate vote – will remain unchanged. The next presidential election is in due in 2008.

But the most significant indication of the exit poll was that the centre Democratic Party, DIKO, headed by Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, will increase its number of seats in the 56-member parliament. CYBC gave DIKO 17.5 percent of the vote, an increase from 14.8% it received in the previous parliamentary election in 2001.

Papadopoulos was widely blamed for the Greek Cypriots’ rejection in April 2004 of a UN plan to reunify the island, split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish occupied north for more than three decades. Turkish Cypriots had backed the peace plan in a simultaneous referendum.

An increase in parliamentary power for DIKO could be seen as an endorsement of Papadopoulos’ policies in rejecting the plan.

State chief returning officer Lazaros Savvides announced the closing of the polls at exactly 5pm local time and counting started immediately afterward.

Cyprus has been divided between a Greek Cypriot south – representing the island’s internationally-recognised government – and a Turkish Cypriot north since a Turkish invasion in 1974, which followed an abortive Athens-backed coup by supporters of union with Greece.