Re-elected Cyprus President Anastasiades pledges cooperation
Incumbent Nicos Anastasiades comfortably won a second five-year term in Sunday’s runoff of the Cyprus’s presidential election.
The conservative statesman received 56 percent, while left-wing challenger Stavros Malas secured 44 percent of the vote. Anastasiades collected 215,281 votes against Malas’s 169,243.
The result is similar to that five years ago when Anastasiades had won his first term with 57.4 percent against Malas’s 42.6 percent.
Anastasiades, visibly moved, addressed the hundreds of noisy supporters gathered at his candidacy’s headquarters in Nicosia, saying there are no winners or losers. “Our people demand cooperation and unity from all of us. I am determined to cooperate with everyone,” he promised, adding that “I remind all of our compatriots that the current state of affairs cannot be the solution to the Cyprus issue.”
Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and many other foreign leaders have expressed their congratulations to the 71-year-old politician from Limassol for his victory.
Turnout in the second round was at 73.97 percent, slightly higher than last Sunday’s 71.8 percent.
Malas, a former health minister under leftist President Demetris Christofias, congratulated Anastasiades on his re-election and said that “society must become more decisive and mature, and more critical of politics. Our struggles are not lost.” Addressing the President he said: “Look after Cyprus!”
The process went by peacefully, with the only exception being the alleged attack by a 44-year-old man against a 69-year-old in Limassol on Saturday night following a political argument between them that resulted in the older man being taken to the local hospital with bone fractures.
