New Marxist President Seeks to Quell Cypriots' Economic Fears

The election of a Marxist as president of the Republic of Cyprus was yesterday greeted with a mixture of relief and barely disguised horror as Greek Cypriots digested their new status as the European Union's first communist-led state.

Across the republic, in cafes and bars and on television chat shows, concern was voiced that while "Comrade" Demetris Christofias and his far-left Akel party may finally resolve the long-festering problem of a divided Cyprus, their fiscal policies would devastate the prosperity of an island built on the most buccaneering style of capitalism.

"Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think this island would turn red," one secondary school teacher told a radio show host. "My father would turn in his grave at the thought that godless communists were in power. It's enough to make you want to emigrate."

A builder's son, Christofias, 61, will be sworn in as Cyprus' sixth president this week after winning more than 53% of the vote in Sunday's election runoff against his conservative rival, Ioannis Kasoulides.

It was the first time that Akel, the island's oldest party, had fielded its own candidate, making the victory particularly satisfying for its supporters. Within hours of the win, emails were circulating depicting the presidential palace being overshadowed by a huge statue of Stalin. The dictator remains a hero for some of Akel's older members, many of whom studied in Russia and eastern Europe during the Soviet era. But Christofias - who studied in the USSR and who joined Akel as a 14-year-old before working his way up through the ranks and taking over its helm in 1988 - has been at pains to distance himself, at least publicly, from the Marxist-Leninist ideology outlined in Akel's constitutional manifesto. Although the party would seek to strengthen Cyprus's welfare state, he said, it would "work within the framework of the free market".

Concerns about Akel's far-left ideology were also brushed aside by observers of Cypriot politics. In recent years the party has gone out of its way to court the island's business community and even ran several profitable businesses itself.

"They're not unreconstructed communists," said James Ker-Lindsay, a regional analyst at Kingston University London. "Christofias may be a small-town boy ... but he is a supreme pragmatist. His policies, internationally, are more social democratic. He knows to say the right things at the right time and in terms of the economy. I think he realizes that macro-economic policy is made in Frankfurt and Brussels."

But leading cadres in the party neither disguise their admiration for the icons of Marxist-Leninism nor their desire to change the world.

"Am I a Stalinist monster? I don't think I am," said an Akel MP, Stavros Evagorou, at his party's headquarters in Nicosia. "Were mistakes made during the Soviet era? Of course they were. And, yes, Fidel Castro is a hero. After all, he led a highly successful revolution."