The question seems highly controversial, but foreign nationals now make up 24.8 per cent of the population

A total of 378,150 people voted in last Sunday’s parliamentary elections – but what about the foreign nationals?

That number represents 66.4 per cent of those who were eligible to vote, but it’s entirely separate from the 243,000 non-citizens (144,000 of them citizens of a non-EU country, the rest EU citizens) who also live in Cyprus, according to Eurostat figures.

Foreign nationals make up 24.8 per cent of the population, the third-highest share in the EU. If you add foreign-born residents who are now Cyprus citizens, that figure rises to 27.6 per cent.

Generally, though, citizenship is hard to come by. Ninety-four per cent of legal immigrants – the second-highest proportion in the EU, after Czechia – don’t have citizenship, according to the latest figures, meaning they’re not included in those 378,150 who voted last week. 

EU citizens have limited voting rights – able to cast a ballot in local and European elections, as required by EU law – while so-called ‘third-country nationals’ have none at all.

Should the right to vote be extended to some, or all, foreign nationals? That question seems to be something of a hot potato.

The Cyprus Mail contacted six political parties, including almost all of those in the new parliament, asking for comment. At time of writing, only one had responded – either because they prefer to steer clear of the issue, or because the whole idea is too ridiculous to even contemplate.

“There isn’t a country ANYWHERE in the world where people vote in parliamentary and presidential elections without being citizens,” went the rather indignant email from Disy.

That’s actually not true – though non-citizen suffrage is admittedly limited.

A handful of countries do allow it. New Zealand grants full voting rights to permanent residents, irrespective of citizenship. Uruguay (progressive, as ever) changed their law in 1952, extending the right to any resident of 15 years or more. In Malawi, anyone who’s been resident for seven years can vote for parliament.

If we’re talking local elections, the list is longer, including a number of EU countries where the right to vote extends even to third-country nationals. Ireland – a small island with a high proportion of non-citizens, like ourselves – doesn’t even have a minimum-stay requirement, allowing any legal resident to vote. 

Then there’s the UK, where Cypriots have full voting rights even in parliamentary elections (subject to the usual eligibility requirements) due to being Commonwealth citizens – even though, post-Brexit, the approximately 60,000 Britons in Cyprus are unable to vote, even in local elections.

Linda Leblanc was the first foreign-born person to be elected to public office in Cyprus, winning a seat on Peyia council in 2006. She served three terms as councillor, but admits it would be near-impossible for a ‘foreigner’ to do the same now – because the British vote is gone.

The right to vote is vital, she believes – and “the EU is working hard to extend that to any legal residents from whatever country,” she told the Cyprus Mail.

Leblanc recounts how her late husband John Knowles, a Canadian, made a complaint to the Ombudsman back in 2008, concerning the denial of voting rights for third-country nationals.

The Ombudsman replied in 2009, recommending “the completion of ratification of the Convention of the Council of Europe on Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level.” Unsurprisingly, “nothing was ever done”.

That Convention is part of a whole EU framework of directives and recommendations, but Cyprus (she says) consistently neglects to comply in any meaningful way – for instance, by extending voting rights. Instead, “they do it with having silly conferences and workshops, ‘Ooh we’re giving conferences for the immigrants and teaching all the Bangladeshis Greek, aren’t we wonderful’”.

It’s about integration, says Leblanc, giving foreign nationals “the benefit of being fully active in a community, if it’s a proper democracy” – and of course making politicians more responsive to their specific problems.

She recalls the Brexit situation well, having been involved in meetings as a Peyia councillor. The UK government “left it up to national governments to decide what to do” – and indeed, Britons in around 15 EU countries do still have some voting rights.

She’d expected Cyprus to be one of them, given the Commonwealth connection. “We were looking for reciprocity,” she says, “but the government here wasn’t the least bit interested.

“You know what excuse they gave us? They said, ‘Look, the legal British residents who’ve been here for years as EU nationals had the right to register to vote, but very few did – so we take that to mean they’re not interested in voting in Cyprus’.”

That’s debatable (Leblanc herself is proof that enough Brits were interested), but it does touch on the strongest argument for limiting the right to vote – that foreigners, even some long-term residents, are just passing through, and not as invested in Cyprus as actual citizens with a reason to stay here.

That’s the crux of the issue. Maybe not for local elections – patriotism is largely irrelevant when it comes to streetlights and potholes – but certainly for national ones. Is the idea of non-citizens voting just ridiculous, after all?

Maybe so – or perhaps the ridicule itself is outdated, part of a pre-multicultural world. Just last week, Die Linke in Germany (also known as the Left Party) submitted a motion in the Bundestag demanding that “all people who are legally resident in Germany for at least five years should be allowed to vote at the federal level,” i.e. not just in local elections, according to Die Welt.

The motion is unlikely to pass – but the fact that it exists indicates that this may be an idea whose time has come. European societies, including our own, are no longer homogeneous. How long can a democracy survive with a quarter of its population essentially disenfranchised?

“They just ignore it because they don’t want to see a change in the political system,” says Leblanc succinctly. “If they (foreign nationals) had the right to vote, it could be a game changer.”

Think, after all, of how different Cyprus might be if those 243,000 people – even just the smaller number who are permanent residents – had voted last Sunday alongside the 378,150.

Foreign nationals have different priorities. Many are retired here, so they’re going to care more about keeping Cyprus beautiful and protecting the environment. Others may be entrepreneurs, and will care about reducing red tape. None (by definition) are civil servants, who tend to be resistant to change.

Foreign nationals are likely to be more bicommunal. They’d certainly be less attached to the nationalistic idea of Greece, unless they happened to be Greek themselves.

Above all, foreign nationals would be much less likely to be part of the clientelism and political patronage – voting for a party in return for favours – which underlie our entire political system.

Maybe that’s exactly why things are unlikely to change any time soon.