Cyprus-Forum.com

[turkcyp]

deleted by the author...

[Dhavlos]

Turkcyp,

do you mean that cyprus should use a system like in the USA for voting for President?

Do you mean that people would vote for an 'electoral college' by that i mean, you vote for a person who says, 'i will vote for ... if you elect me to the electoral college'?

Thinking about it, it would probably work better than direct voting, because it may lead to a less controversial figure coming to office.(but then again, look at Bush!!)

[turkcyp]

deleted by the author...

What I was doing was proposing a system where existing parties in both communities can start forming alliances.

[Alexandros Lordos]

If in the united Cyprus we start choosing individually by cross voting mechanism which I am not a big fan of (at least for a while temporarily) then these parties may do more than forming alliances but may be start deciding who to nominate together as well.

Yes, cross-voting will essentially have two effects:

a. In the short-term, it will "train" politicians from each community to behave more respectfully towards the other community.

b. In the medium/long term, it will lead to the development of bicommunal political parties, because of the obvious electoral gains of having direct access to the voters of the other community.


(Note to turkcyp: Cross-voting doesn't necessarily mean that some political parties will be excluded from power because they won't be voted by the other community. Politicians are notoriously flexible, when it comes to procuring votes. I can easily imagine Serdar Denktash, for instance, trying to win GC votes by appealing to a "pan-cypriot" right wing mentality, in co-operation with DIKO or another GC right-wing party. For instance, we might have a coalition of AKEL-CTP arguing for bicommunal integrated schooling, so as to achieve a common Cypriot identity, with a DP-DIKO coalition arguing for separate schooling, so as to preserve the integrity of Turkish and Greek culture in Cyprus. So you see, cross-voting doesn't exactly "dilute" representation. It merely expands it to include the right-wing or left-wing segment of the other community as well, thus leading to politics that will be based on issues rather than on ethnic rallying)