CYPRUS: The First President

On muleback across dusty roads, on rattletrap chartered buses, walking down steep mountain paths, the Greeks of Cyprus this week practiced what their forebears invented 2,500 years ago. In the first popular elections since 1931, Cyprus got ready to become a self-governing republic in February. Under the Anglo-Greek-Turkish truce to end the island's four-year civil war, the new republic of Cyprus is to have a President elected by the island's Greek community, a Vice President chosen by its smaller Turkish community. The Turkish Cypriots, by acclamation, had already chosen that Vice President, Dr. Fazil Kuchuk.

Balloting was therefore limited to the four-fifths of the islanders belonging to the Greek community. Obvious favorite for President was Archbishop Makarios, the bearded, decisive ethnarch of Cyprus' Greeks, who achieved political martyrdom when the British exiled him to the distant Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean in 1956, and since has impressed the British and the Turkish Cypriots with his moderation in victory. But some embittered Greek Cypriots dislike Makarios, because the settlement specifically repudiated enosis (union with Greece) and left Britain sovereign over two bases on the island's south coast. One such dissident, an elderly, respected Nicosia lawyer named John Clerides, 73, presented his candidacy against Makarios. The situation was made to order for Cyprus' Communists. When Governor Sir Hugh Foot ended the four-year state of emergency last month, they emerged from underground, led by Ezekias ("Pappy") Papaioannou, 51, a Spanish Civil War veteran. Around him were Prague and Moscow-trained party activists, who already control the island's dock and farm unions. They volunteered their support of Right-Winger Clerides in order to work against Makarios.

The ethnarch made one campaign speech condemning "modern hypocrites and Pharisees," and said loftily, "I am the least interested man in these elections." Makarios knew he would finish well out front. The bulk of Loser Clerides' strength was Communist. In the elections for Cyprus' first Parliament, to take place within the next month, the Communists are likely to stand as the only important opposition voice on the island.