Cyprus went to the polls today with leaders appealing to voters to turnout despite widespread disillusion with lawmakers after a prolonged downturn triggered by a eurozone bailout.
President Nicos Anastasiades, whose right-wing government negotiated the 2013 bailout by international creditors and has claimed credit for the island's subsequent recovery, warned those tempted to abstain that they risked losing their right to a say.
"I urge everyone to exercise their right to select the party, the candidate, of their choice -- it is their right. But anyone who abstains, I repeat, will not have the right to complain afterwards," he said after casting his ballot in the coastal city of Limassol.
He said the higher the turnout the greater the legitimacy the new parliament would have, an appeal that showed the scale of concern about the likelihood of a record low turnout in a country where voting is a statutory obligation.
The speaker of the outgoing parliament, Yiannakis Omirou, of the opposition socialist EDEK party, said "abstentions lead to a deficient democracy".
The two largest parties, Anastasiades' ruling right-wing DISY party and the main opposition communist party AKEL, have spent most of the campaign trying to persuade their disillusioned rank and file to turn out and vote.
Parties are trying to mobilise their traditional supporters to ensure that abstentions do not reach an unprecedented 30 percent which would hurt the larger parties while smaller parties might gain from the protest vote.
A spate of corruption scandals in public office and Parliament's handling of the eurozone bailout agreement have sparked widespread anger and prompted many Cypriots to mull defying the statutory requirement to vote.
Even though the threshold to enter Parliament has been raised from 1.8 percent to 3.6 percent, a possible eight parties could get in, compared with five in the outgoing legislature.
