CHRISTOFIAS DEMETRIS
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS

Mr. Demetris Christofias was inaugurated President of the Republic of Cyprus on 28 February 2008 following his victory at the Presidential Elections of 24 February 2008.

At the time of his election Mr. Christofias was serving his second five-year term as President of the House of Representatives, a post he held since 2001. He was first elected to the House of Representatives as an AKEL-Left-New Forces party candidate for the Kyrenia district in 1991 and was re-elected in 1996, in 2001 and 2006.

He has been General Secretary of the AKEL Central Committee since 1988, a post to which he was re-elected four more times (in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005). Following the death of Ezekias Papaioannou, AKEL’s General Secretary, on 10 April 1988, he was appointed Acting General Secretary by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the party and elected General Secretary on 22 April 1988. In 1987 he was elected on the Secretariat of the Central Committee of AKEL, in 1986 as a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and in 1982 as a member of the Central Committee of the party. In 1976 he was elected member of the Nicosia-Kyrenia District Committee of AKEL. After his election as president of the Republic, in 2009, he resigned from the post of Secretary General of the AKEL Central Committee, but remained an active member of the AKEL Central Committee.

Mr. Christofias became active politically at an early age when at the age of fourteen he joined the Pancyprian United Students Organisation. In 1964 he became a member of AKEL, of the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) and of the United Democratic Youth Organisation (EDON). In 1969, at the 5th Congress of EDON, he was elected member of its Central Council. In 1974, following the completion of his studies in Moscow, he returned to Cyprus and was employed by EDON, where he was elected to the post of Central Organisational Secretary and, in 1977, to the post of General Secretary. He served at this post until 1987.

In 2007 the Russian Federation awarded the prestigious Alexander Pushkin medal to Mr Christofias for his contribution to the development of friendship between Russia and Cyprus and for his support of the Russian language and culture. In 2004 the Department of International and European Economic and Social Studies of the University of Macedonia, in Thessaloniki, Greece awarded him an honorary doctorate. He has also been declared Honorary Citizen of the city of Patras in Greece.
The President holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in History from the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow (Academy of Social Sciences of the Soviet Union). He speaks English and Russian.

He was born on 29 August 1946, in Dhikomo in the Kyrenia District, in the area of Cyprus under military occupation by Turkey since 1974.
The President is married to Elsi Chiratou and they have two daughters and a son.