THIRD-PLACE CANDIDATE STILL OPTIMISTIC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NICOSIA 000896

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/07/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL NATO CY
SUBJECT: THIRD-PLACE CANDIDATE STILL OPTIMISTIC

REF: NICOSIA 839

NICOSIA 00000896 001.7 OF 002


Classified By: Ambassador Ronald Schlicher, Reasons 1.4 (b),(d)


1. (C) SUMMARY: Polling that shows him well behind
front-runner incumbent President Tassos Papadopoulos and
left-wing challenger Dimitris Christofias troubles
DISY-backed presidential candidate Ioannis Kasoulides little.
In a meeting with Embassy officers November 8, the
soft-spoken but articulate Kasoulides claimed that anecdotal
evidence and internal surveys showed the true gap falling
well within accepted margins for error. He recognized,
however, the difficulties his campaign faced in confronting
the well-financed, media-backed Papadopoulos and the
growing-in-popularity Christofias. Job 1 for his
communications team entailed overcoming the image of
Kasoulides as a weak-willed technocrat unable to withstand
"foreign demands" for a reintroduction of the "partitionist"
2004 Annan Plan, he revealed. The candidate would not
attempt to mimic his rivals' aggressive, backwards-looking
tactics, however, regardless of critics' demands that he play
dirty, too. "Being a nice guy is what won me this
candidacy," Kasoulides quipped. "I cannot change that." END
SUMMARY.

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Numbers Lie (He Hopes)
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2. (C) Opinion polls released in early November reveal
Kasoulides, at 26 percent, trailing Papadopoulos and
Christofias by a half-dozen or more points. Worse, the trend
tilted downward, and at an accelerated rate. "I don't
understand these numbers," Kasoulides fretted. Supporters
continued to pack rooms to hear him speak, he claimed, in
both the cities and rural areas. Further, his team's own
internal surveys showed the gap between him and front-runner
Papadopoulos steady at three percent, a statistical tie by
Cypriot polling standards. Pressed to explain the
contradiction, Kasoulides argued that many Cypriots were
reluctant to reveal their true voting intentions to unknown
pollsters. None had predicted Papadopoulos's outright
first-round win in 2003, for example.


3. (C) At this stage in the campaign, however, Kasoulides
knew he ranked third in anyone's poll. Fifty percent of the
electorate would support the candidate they perceived would
best provide security, he explained. And in Cyprus,
"security" meant the status quo, which he most definitely
opposed. Papadopoulos had won in 2003 and led in 2007 by
capitalizing on voters' fear of the unknown. The President's
backers successfully portrayed him as the man who had
resisted the foreigners and the hated Annan Plan, and they
were equally apt at labeling Kasoulides a U.S./ UK puppet and
turncoat who aimed someday to reintroduce the UN initiative.

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Be True to Your School
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4. (C) Billboards plastered across Nicosia trumpet
Kasoulides campaign planks, from halving Cypriots' mandatory
military service to reducing the formidable tax first-time
home buyers pay. His opponents, in contrast, have revealed
few of their respective campaign pledges, focusing instead on
their counterparts' perceived failings in the run-up to, and
aftermath of, the April 2004 Annan referendum. Critics and
supporters alike have argued that Kasoulides must join the
fray, and that his campaign, by tackling so many issues at
once, lacked focus. The candidate dismissed the criticism
out-of-hand. "Cypriots DO care about the future," he
reasoned, and Papadopoulos's constant return to the Annan
Plan and referendum period left them dissatisfied.
Kasoulides therefore intended to continue focusing on issues
that affected Cypriots' daily lives.


5. (C) Nor would he adopt the President's pit-bull tactics
and angry visage. "If the party wanted that, Nikos
Anastassiades would be running in my place," Kasoulides
retorted, referring to DISY's hard-nosed president who rarely
shies from tussles (Reftel). Besides, the two-stage format
of Cypriot elections meant that only foolish candidates
alienated parties they might later be forced to engage.
Kasoulides instead would search for a manner to connect with
the aforementioned status quo-ers who doubted his leadership
credentials, while refraining from dirty politics and
continuing to push a pro-solution policy. "Cypriot must have
both security and prospects for a solution. With
Papadopoulos, they have only the former."

NICOSIA 00000896 002 OF 002



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Engineering the Comeback
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6. (C) Autumn opinion polls offered little insight,
Kasoulides surmised, since many Cypriot voters would wait
until January or even February to make their final choice.
He claimed that Papadopoulos's position was more precarious
than most believed. DIKO, the President's party, was barely
half the size of DISY and Christofias's AKEL; should each
achieve 90 percent cohesion rates and co-opt a few DIKO
and/or EDEK voters, Papadopoulos risked first-round
elimination. Regrettably, a large chunk of DISY stalwarts,
mainly hard-right nationalists who opposed the Annan Plan,
saw a kindred spirit in Tassos Papadopoulos and were
contemplating voting DIKO. Kasoulides pollsters had
identified the potential converts and were working to
maintain them in the ranks, however.


7. (C) Kasoulides turned to one campaign promise likely to
win him some support: the reduction of Cypriot males'
mandatory military service, at 26 months the second-longest
(after Israel's) in the world. The candidate proposed
lopping off a year, maintaining Cyprus's deterrent
capabilities by augmenting the professional military by 2,500
combatants. Poorly-trained conscripts could not take
advantage of available, advanced military technologies,
Kasoulides asserted. By acquiring such systems, such as
motion-tracking cameras for monitoring Buffer Zone
incursions, a much-smaller force could offer greater defense.
An integral component of Kasoulides's modernization campaign
lay in establishing closer security relationships with allied
nations; NATO's Partnership for Peace represented the perfect
vehicle. If elected, he claimed he would urge Cyprus's
historically non-aligned electorate to support an immediate
application for PfP.

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Comment
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8. (C) We don't doubt that DISY's hand-picked crowds greet
Kasoulides with warm smiles and applause at every stop; at
heart he's a decent man who comprehends that Cypriots must
confront societal and economic problems unrelated to the
Cyprus Problem, and offers concrete proposals to solve them.
Yet his continued optimism in the face of plunging polling
strikes us as misguided or worse, insincere. Upon departing
Kasoulides's office, DISY Deputy President Averoff Neophytou,
a close Embassy contact who currently liaises between the
campaign staff and party HQ, offered a far more depressing
opinion over DISY's chances in February. Neophytou's
observations strike us as more accurate.
SCHLICHER