Our View: Party alliances proving hard to forge ahead of 2023 elections

In a survey conducted by Politis newspaper last month, most respondents (74 per cent) said they wanted the future president to be honest. The second quality was the ability to solve problems (48 per cent) and the third to be able to look ahead. The same poll found that for the majority of the people (71 per cent) the priority of the new president must be to fight corruption. Solving the Cyprus problem came second (56 per cent).

That most people consider corruption the main problem facing the country and believe we need an honest president does not reflect positively on President Anastasiades, who has been in office for the last nine years. He may have had the ability to solve problems, apart from the Cyprus problem, which he calculatingly spurned the opportunity to settle, but during his term the country fell into international disrepute because of the golden passports – from which his family law office benefited – and is currently facing infringement proceedings by the EU.

If Anastasiades leaves office next year – though the way he has been acting and promoting the government’s work gives the impression he may seek a third term despite his assurances to the contrary – it will be with his reputation in tatters regardless of how many authorities he sets up to combat corruption. This will also have a political cost for Disy which backed him unquestioningly throughout his term even when it was to the party’s detriment.

The big paradox is that despite broad public disaffection with the government, polls carried out on potential candidates consistently give a top popularity rating to Nicos Christodoulides, the former foreign minister, who was Anastasiades’ closest associate until his resignation earlier this year. Christodoulides was untainted by this close association nor was his campaigning while minister, and claiming he had not decided whether he would stand in the elections, considered to be lacking in honesty.

Admittedly, opinion polls before the field of candidates is complete and the election campaign is in full flow cannot be very accurate. So far there are three confirmed, independent candidates, with Christodoulides set to announce his candidacy in the next few weeks being the fourth. The New Wave movement will also put forward a candidate. With the exception of Disy, which ratified the candidacy of its leader Averof Neophytou a fortnight ago, all other parties have been searching for candidates. The two biggest opposition parties, Akel and Diko, have decided to join forces but after many weeks of talks have still not been able to find a mutually acceptable candidate.

Although both have made a big issue out of the need to combat corruption, making it their rallying cry in last year’s parliamentary elections, they do not seem able to find the person who will clean up the country. On the Cyprus problem they have big differences, even though this had never stopped them joining forces in the past. The one person they reached agreement on, Marcos Kyprianou, declined their offer, and a crunch meeting between the party leaders is expected to take place in the next few days – a breakthrough seems highly unlikely.

The other parliamentary parties – Greens, Edek, Elam, Dipa – have also been involved in exploratory meetings without deciding anything. Dipa leader Marios Garoyian has come up with the idea of a national unity government, but it is a non-starter – when two parties cannot agree on a common candidate what is the likelihood of five parties doing so? Perhaps in 2013, when the state was on the verge of bankruptcy and the banking sector on the brink of collapse a national unity government was necessary, but in today’s conditions there is no political justification for it. It would not be good for our democracy either.

The issue is that with the Cyprus problem dead for all intents and purposes, the political parties have lost what little identity each had. Akel, supposedly, embraces Marxism, Disy has a pro-West, free market outlook and the Greens campaign for environmental issues. The rest of the parties stand for nothing without the Cyprus problem. What is the difference between Dipa, Diko, Edek and Elam? Together with Akel they all embrace populist causes, protecting people not repaying their bank loans, backing the most unreasonable union demands and advocating more state spending as the solution to all problems facing the country.

Without the Cyprus problem, the parties of the so-called centre have become supposed hardliners on the battle against corruption in their rhetoric, but they realise that this is not enough to secure the loyalty of their traditional voters and is the reason they are having so much difficulty agreeing on a candidate. Perhaps the answer for parties that stand for nothing apart from populism would be to find a candidate that shares their outlook.