Former Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides won - today, Sunday - the Cypriot presidential elections after a second and final round of voting, and made promises to form a unity government tasked with breaking the deadlock in peace talks with the Turkish Cypriots.
Official results showed that Christodoulides, 49, won 51.9% of the vote, compared to rival candidate Andreas Mavroyannis, 66, who got 48.1% of the vote.
Christodoulides held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2018 and 2022, while the 66-year-old diplomat Mavroyannis was the chief negotiator in peace talks with the Turkish Cypriots and permanent representative of Cyprus to the United Nations.
The next president will face problems ranging from stalemate in reunification talks with the Turkish Cypriots on the ethnically divided island, to labor disputes amid out-of-control inflation, to division over corruption scandals and an increase in immigration.
Presidential elections are held every 5 years.
Nikos Anastasiades, a conservative from the country's ruling Democratic Party, has held the post of president since 2013, and was elected for another term in 2018. By law, he cannot run for a third term.