Political analyst Christoforos Christoforou gives his verdict on the election results and what they mean for the new parliament
The morning after Cyprus’s parliamentary elections reveals significant challenges for the six parties now entering the House of Representatives. They will need to find ways to consult and cooperate if they are to legislate in the interests of society as a whole — and that means grappling seriously with an uncomfortable fact: the parties that won no seats still represent roughly one sixth of the electorate. The interests and rights of the citizens who voted for them cannot simply be ignored.
There is also a particular responsibility that falls on five of the six parliamentary parties when it comes to ELAM. This is a party that has never renounced the core values of its ideology — racism and the dehumanisation of fellow human beings. It denies its own past, refuses to acknowledge it, and instead engages in political grave-robbing and flag-waving to conceal its true face. The proper response from every other party in parliament is an unwavering commitment to fundamental democratic values and the defence of everyone’s rights. That is the right line of resistance. It is not accommodation. It is not the gradual adoption of ELAM’s positions in the hope of winning back its voters.
The election results also expose a series of failures — and they do not belong to the parties alone. Analysts, media outlets and journalists must look at themselves too. Rather than engaging soberly with society and respecting the basic rules of democracy, too many spent the campaign in a prolonged exercise of blaming and lecturing citizens for their choices. The apocalyptic predictions of chaos, the relentlessly negative focus on certain individuals, the point-scoring — all of it crowded out the actual obligation: to present ideas and proposals capable of addressing real problems.
And the real problems barely got a look-in. Technology, digital transformation, artificial intelligence and their implications. The economic consequences of wars in our region and beyond. The question of alliances and what they mean for the rights of displaced persons. The serious threats to media pluralism. None of it was discussed. The obsession with polling numbers and their chronic misuse made things worse, turning the campaign into a numbers game rather than a contest of ideas.
The campaign is over. The people have spoken. But we cannot simply wipe the slate clean. The new parliament has an obligation to put these issues on its agenda. The first step is to shed the delusion of victory — the traditional parties need to look their defeats squarely in the face and demonstrate that they can do better than those they spent years dismissing as incompetent and clueless. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in 2031 issuing the same warnings about the morning after.
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