Communist victory in Cyprus

In an election result that surprised me, the
Communist Party has won the election for president in Cyprus. What does this mean? I think it depends on just how quickly the reunification of the island happens, and the extent to which the Communist Party honors their pre-election promise to give the right-wing party control over the economy. If the reunification takes up a considerable portion of the new regime's energy and drags out for a long time, I doubt the Communists will spend much time on domestic reform. If, however, the reunification happens quickly, and they decide to get their hands dirty in Communist reform, then I fear the reunified Cyprus will wind up looking a lot more like the north part of the island (GDP per capita around $7,000US) than the south (GDP per capita around $22,000US).

Did the Dead Vote Too?

I'm not sure how we all missed this, but Cyprus just had their Presidential primary elections. The current president from the left-centre party, Tassos Papadopoulos, has been eliminated by the Communist party candidate Demetris Christophias and right wing candidate Ioannis Kassoulides. The big issue in Cypriot politics is reunification of the island, as the northeastern portion is controlled by Turkey.

But the most interesting thing about the article is this statement: "Cypriots living abroad, in Britain and Greece, were flown home on specially-chartered planes to take part in the vote." To me, it doesn't really seem like this is good for democracy. It's already expected to be a close election (the primary was decided by under 800 votes--that's not very many flights!), and it appears that whoever has the most money to charter the most planes might in fact tip the balance. Sure, I know that in the US the parties hire buses to shuttle people to and from polling places, but something about chartering planes to fly people in for an election seems to go way beyond that.

But maybe that's just me.