There was no outright winner in the Cyprus election over the weekend meaning that a new round of voting will be needed to decide the victor.
Conservative Frontrunner Nicos Anastsiades won 45.46% of the overall vote, well ahead of his nearest rival, Stavros Malas who achieved 26.91%. Unfortunately for Anastiades he needed to win 50% of the vote to attain an outright majority in the Republics government. He now faces the prospect of taking on left-wing Malas for a runoff on February 24th.
Anastsiades based his campaign on securing a better deal for Cyprus’s needed bailout and is thought to have the most votes due to his presentation as the man most able to get a better deal from Cyprus European partners.
The weekends elections was seen as the most important since the small island nation gained independence as voters took to the polling stations to elect a president to rescue the country from bankruptcy.
The European Union has shown reluctance to bailout Cyprus, with Germany leading the calls for caution over the islands strong ties to Russia. It s believed that many Russian criminals hold Cypriot bank accounts and the EU is worried that any bailout funds will be used to prop up banks holding money gained through criminal activity.
Cyprus’s financial crisis was caused, in part, by the heavy losses its banks suffered on their Greek debt holdings. The proposed bailout would be around €17bn, much smaller than previous Eurozone rescue packages. But the lack of a deal continues to cause concern in the financial markets.
Cyprus has requested €17billion worth of bailout funds from the EU and International Monetary Fund, an amount equal to the nation’s GDP. The new President will face calls to restart talks with Turkey and the Turkish population living in the North of the island, the North was cut off from the rest of the island in 1974 when Turkey invaded the island.
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