Cyprus votes amid fears of record low turnout

Cyprus went to the polls on Sunday 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.

- Far-right fears -

That could spell a more fractious and unpredictable Parliament.

It could also pave the way for extreme right-wing party ELAM to enter the 56-member parliament, in an echo of the wave of right-wing populism that has swept through Europe.

ELAM defends the Athens-inspired coup of 1974 that sought to unite the island with Greece and that triggered Turkey's invasion of its northern third ushering in a division that remains to this day.

Progress on UN-backed talks to reunify the island has not been an issue because both the main parties support reunification of the divided island under a federal roof.

Smaller, hard-line parties such as centre-right DIKO and Omirou's EDEK oppose a federal deal and believe the Greek Cypriot side has made too many concessions in the reunification talks.

The negotiations are at a crucial stage and Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiades and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mustafa Akinci must make painful compromises to reach a deal.

Ruling DISY is expected to emerge as the largest party by trumpeting the government?s record of saving Cyprus from economic collapse after it came to power in 2013.

Cyprus has emerged from more than three years of economic slowdown after the government imposed harsh austerity measures in exchange for a European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout.

In return for 10 billion euros ($13 billion at the time), Cyprus agreed in March 2013 to wind down its second-largest bank, Laiki, and impose losses on depositors in undercapitalised top lender Bank of Cyprus.

In March this year, the euro group of finance ministers praised Cyprus for its successful exit from the bailout programme.

And the Cyprus economy is expected to grow by 2.2 percent in 2016.

The opposition argues that unemployment is still relatively high and that those jobs that do exist are of the low-pay variety.

A total of 542,915 are eligible to vote. A record 493 hopefuls are standing for the 56 seats in parliament.

Polls close at 6 pm (1500 GMT). Results are expected by midnight (2100 GMT).