Athens, May 24 (dpa/GNA) – The conservative Democratic Rally (DISY) party has come out on top in parliamentary elections in Cyprus, preliminary official results showed on Sunday evening.
The DISY garnered some 27% of the votes, the Interior Ministry said after some 85% of ballots had been counted. The left-wing Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) came in second with 23.8%, followed by the far-right, ultranationalist National People’s Front (ELAM) with some 11%.
Voter turnout stood at 66.6%. The official final result and the exact distribution of the 56 seats in parliament are due to be released on Monday, according to state broadcaster RIK.
The centrist Democratic Party garnered 10%, while two smaller parties, including the Direct Democracy Cyprus, a new party founded by YouTuber Fidias Panayiotou, are also poised to enter parliament.
Seventeen parties were competing for the votes of around 569,000 eligible voters in the EU country.
The election is not expected to have a major impact on politics, however, as executive power in Cyprus lies with the president, who is directly elected by the public. Conservative President Nikos Christodoulides, a former member of DISY, has been in office since 2023 when he ran as an independent. He forms and leads the government, while parliament mainly performs an oversight role.
The vote is therefore being closely watched as an important barometer of the public’s mood ahead of the 2028 presidential election, in which Christodoulides is eligible to run.
GNA