New Cyprus President Ioannis Christofias is seen here in a file photo talking to journalists in an interview at his party headquarters in Nicosia on May 9, 2007.

With the February 17 electoral defeat, the era of not only Tassos Papadopoulos, but also the pre-1963 antagonists – all tainted with the intercommunal bloodshed – was believed to have come to an end on Cyprus.

Archbishop Makarios, Dr Fazil Kucuk and Spyros Kyprianou were long dead, Glafkos Clerides was out of politics, fishing on a boat and writing new volumes of his famous “My Deposition,” and Rauf Denktash was effectively sidelined from active politics by his successor Mehmet Ali Talat with the full cooperation of the pro-settlement Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Ankara... With Papadopoulos out of office, the last representative of the period of intercommunal violence was also out of active politics...

Conceding defeat, Papadopoulos had vowed he would stay “above party politics” and would not ask his supporters to support either of the two contestants in the runoff vote... That position of Papadopoulos, however, lasted less than 24 hours and soon through his Democratic Party (DIKO) he engaged in very serious bargaining with both contenders in the presidential race.

DIKO and Papadopoulos were demanding the position of parliament speaker, the Foreign Ministry and two or three other ministries, plus a commitment by the candidate that he would abide by a set of principles – which included a pledge not to accept anything like the Annan Plan of 2004 and not to accept anything without obtaining the blessing of the National Council. The Socialist EDEK, the third party in the former Papadopoulos-led coalition, on the other hand, was demanding two ministerial posts in exchange for its endorsement of one of the candidates.

Ioannis Kassoulides did not accept some of the demands, but AKEL’s Dimitris Christofias agreed to everything and thus, with the votes of the former three-way coalition of Papadopoulos, became the new president.

Though Christofias and AKEL deny the claims, saying that the former three-way coalition led by Papadopoulos is on the way to being rehashed under the leadership of the president-elect, there is already speculation that George Lillikas will either be retaining his Foreign Ministry portfolio in the new cabinet or will be replaced by EU Commissioner Markos Kyprianou, the younger son of late Greek Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou...

Thus, the Christofias cabinet to be announced after the president is sworn in on Thursday will provide concrete evidence of whether a new era has begun on the island, or whether the AKEL leader, for the sake of becoming president, has agreed to be turned into a type of ”Papadopoulos-Christofias” hybrid puppet whose strings will be in the hands of Papadopoulos.

In other words, it is feared that the change of occupant of the presidential office might not mean much if the three-way Papadopoulos coalition remains intact with just a new leader. This will become clear after Thursday’s swearing-in ceremony in Nicosia.

Yusuf Kanli, a Turkish-Cypriot columnist, contributed this piece to Kathimerini from Ankara.