Nikos Christodoulides

He was elected president in February 2023 with 52.9 per cent of the vote after a bitter divorce from the Disy party that saw Averof Neophytou ousted as leader when his own presidential candidacy failed in the first round of the elections.

Young, trendy, skilled at PR and saying all the right things, Christodoulides was hugely popular throughout his campaign. He went up against the much-less flamboyant Andreas Mavroyiannis, a Cyprob veteran and former Greek Cypriot negotiator who was backed in the election by left-wing Akel.

The Disy rift was partly due to the unspoken backing of Christodoulides by his mentor, then President Nicos Anastasiades, whom he served under as spokesman and then foreign minister from 2018 to 2022 when he resigned to run his presidential campaign.

As government spokesman from 2014 to 2018, he was part of the Crans-Montana entourage in 2017, as was Mavroyiannis as it happened. One might say the more things change, the more they stay the same when it comes to the Cyprob.

In the presidential elections, Mavroyiannis was seen as the ‘dove’ on the Cyprus issue, whereas Christodoulides was seen in some quarters as a bit hawkish although he has made all the right noises since the start of his presidency.

‘We will all pay the price if Cyprus problem is not resolved’

Concern remains that although Christodoulides billed himself as an independent, not having the support of Disy and Akel, he secured the backing of the smaller political parties, none of which are particularly dovish on the Cyprus issue. A few are downright hardline.

How this will play out only time will tell. There is little to lose in using conciliatory language for foreign or domestic consumption until the chips are actually down on the table in some remote Swiss resort as the track record on the Cyprob has shown time and again, and if such negotiations ever get that far again or even off the ground at all this time around.

Only the new UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin, appointed in January 2024, can pass on to the UNSG whether she thinks there are enough grounds to re-start a new process.

To be fair, Christodoulides is inheriting a much bigger headache than his predecessors. All previous processes had started from an agreed framework where the two sides were negotiating for a bicommunal, bizonal federation. Ankara and the Turkish Cypriots have changed tack since the failure at Crans-Montana, insisting on a two-state solution as the basis for new talks. It does not look promising.

Christodoulides naturally began his presidency saying the Cyprus issue was a priority for him but with little going on, not much interest from the UN, and zero prospects talk is cheap so he went to great lengths to show that he was doing something and he spent the first months of his presidency trying to get the EU to appoint a Cyprus envoy as an “added value”, one of his favourite expressions.

Cyprus proposal for an EU envoy had little traction in Brussels

Cyprus proposal for an EU envoy had little traction in Brussels

But there is a difference between doing something and being seen to be doing something and Christodoulides with a long enough career in the diplomatic sphere, must have known Brussels would be a bust when it came to Cyprus envoys. The Turkish side would never in a million years have agreed to this for starters. Any high-school history student could have seen that.  

One analyst used this as an example of the gap between the government’s words and actions. “They talked up the EU envoy for six months. And now, even after nothing happened, the narrative is still there, they’re doubling down on it. This is what the public sees – a great deal of talk but no results,” he told the Cyprus Mail.

In the end Christodoulides was forced to wait for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to decide if the time was right to send someone in. It was almost a year later by the time Holguin was appointed even as Guterres in his January report spoke of “sobering anniversaries” in 2024, and showed little optimism throughout his review of the preceding period.

Our View: UNSG’s report shows both sides are fine with partition

In the meantime, Christodoulides spent the rest of 2023, after the EU shot down his idea, continuing to talk about his Cyprob priorities. He met in July with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar at the CMP lab – their first meeting – and again at a UN social occasion in December.

He was unable to secure a meeting with Tatar and the UNSG during the UN General Assembly junket in New York three months before, though both leaders met separately with Guterres during the week. It was also Christodoulides’ first address to the UN General Assembly where he called on Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to work together for peace in Cyprus. However, a day before the president spoke, Erdogan had called again for the international community to recognise the ‘TRNC’, not a good omen for a new start.

Address by Nikos Christodoulides, at the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly

By February 2024, polls showed that Christodoulides; popularity had fallen substantially. A poll by Sigma gave Christodoulides a whopping 49 per cent in negative ratings, with positive ratings standing at a paltry 19 per cent.

Of those who voted for him in 2023, 28 per cent now had a negative view of his administration, 35 per cent a positive view, and 37 had no opinion either way. Next, 63 per cent of respondents felt the country was headed in the wrong direction, 25 per cent had no opinion, and just 12 per cent thought matters were moving in the right way.

Asked what is the first thing that comes to them when they think of the first 12 months of the present government, 21 per cent said “disappointment”, 15 per cent said “stagnation”, and 8 per cent said “failure”. Only 6 per cent felt the president “is trying”.

Christodoulides’ popularity plummets

With this dark cloud over his head, a month later, speaking during a televised speech on his first year as president, Christodoulides tooted his own horn when it came to the appointment of the new UN envoy. “The appointment of Ms Holguin and the beginning of a new effort to resume talks was the result of our own persistent efforts and initiatives,” he said. He described Holguin’s mission as a “window of opportunity, despite the challenges posed by the Turkish side.

As the Cyprus Mail noted in an editorial following the poll: “The philosophy of the president, which is to please as many people as possible, has not worked. For as long as he was campaigning and telling people what they wanted to hear, his popularity kept rising, but this formula has not worked since he entered office. Even so, he has persisted with it, attending public events every day, making statements about whatever happened to be in the news and making promises about the better future he would deliver.”

In a second editorial following the televised address in March 2024, the paper also noted Christodoulides’ claim that Holguin’s appointment was the result of his government’s efforts. “The overriding impression was that Holguin’s appointment was an end in itself, because the president’s primary concern was to be seen to be doing something about the deadlocked Cyprus problem, even though this did not amount to much.”

Our View: President presented UN envoy appointment as an end in itself

The upshot is that it is still early days in the Christodoulides’ presidency and there is still time for him to prove himself despite the low polling after one year in office. The test will be whether he will have the courage his predecessors lacked to take the hard decisions when the chips are down. He may yet be forced to choose a bad Cyprob solution because of losses sustained due to the passage of time and the de facto situation on the ground since 2004, or he may be faced with having to choose no solution at all and go down in history as Cyprus’ ‘partition president’ if it comes to it. Neither is a choice to be envied.

Nikos Christodoulides was born in Paphos in 1973. He joined the diplomatic service in 1999 and held various posts including Director of the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Spokesman of the Cyprus Presidency to the Council of the European Union in Brussels, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Cyprus to Greece, Director of the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Consul-General of the High Commission of the Republic of Cyprus to the UK before his appointment as government spokesman in 2014 during Nicos Anastasiades’ first term and was appointed as foreign minister during the second term. His rise to the presidency in such a short time without the backing of the two biggest parties was unprecedented in Cyprus.