Former DISY leader Averof Neofytou said a close associate of party leader Annita Demetriou asked him to help re-elect her as House Speaker, in exchange for supporting his own 2028 presidential ambition.
Neofytou made the claim in a vidcast interview with Phileleftheros published on Monday, a day after announcing he would run for President of the Republic in 2028.
“It is not a personal issue, that because someone broke their commitment I should be a candidate in the presidential elections. Society would despise me,” he said, adding that he was running because of what is at stake for the country.
Neofytou, who led DISY from 2013 to 2023, was the party’s candidate in the last presidential election. He finished third in the first round in February 2023 with 26.11% of the vote, behind Nikos Christodoulides on 32.04 per cent and Andreas Mavroyiannis on 29.59%. That left DISY without a candidate in the run-off.
Christodoulides, a former DISY member who had served as government spokesman and foreign minister under Nicos Anastasiades, ran as an independent despite the party’s endorsement of Neofytou. Backed by DIKO, DIPA and EDEK, he went on to beat Mavroyiannis in the run-off with 51.97%. Neofytou stepped down as party leader after the first round and was succeeded by Demetriou.
‘We all go united into the presidential elections with you’
Asked by Phileleftheros journalist Frixos Dalitis, whether his help had been sought to elect Demetriou as House Speaker, and that he had been promised she would not insist on her own candidacy if he helped her, Neofytou said: “I have never told a lie in my life, and since you are asking me, I cannot hold back the facts”.
He stressed the request came at a dinner at a well-known fish tavern in Nicosia before the parliamentary elections, organised by Demetriou’s closest associate and held in her presence. The associate, whom he did not name, asked him to work for her re-election so that “we all go united into the presidential elections with you”, Neofytou said. He added that he keeps his word.
He said he had helped get Demetriou elected House Speaker twice. In 2021, he said, the party accused him over his cooperation with the far-right ELAM to secure her election. “Was it because I received some promise or commitment from her? That is not how I operate,” he said, adding that no dinner had preceded it.
He also said that the day after the parliamentary elections, senior party figures publicly told Demetriou to “keep your head down, rein in your ambitions, you’ll fall flat on your face”, and that he had stood by her when she was cornered.
Demetriou has since formally announced her own interest in the nomination. She said Neofytou had the right to take whatever position he wished, but the party was obliged to follow its procedures and its charter.
DISY’s top leadership met on Monday to continue discussing the party’s internal procedures ahead of the presidential elections, the party said in a statement. Its Executive Bureau will meet on Tuesday to draw up a proposal on the procedures and timetable, which will then go to the Political Bureau for discussion and decisions.
‘The betrayed never betrays’
“The betrayed never betrays. But at the same time, the betrayed must make sure he is not betrayed again,” Neofytou said. Referring to himself in the third person, he added: “Averof has never hurt the genuine DISY supporter, and never will.”
He criticised people who, he said, had spoken in recent days on social media and in public statements about unity and political ethics. “Many of them tore up unity and political ethics like scrap paper and threw them in the bin. Unity is served by deeds, not words,” he said, adding that he had been on the front line of the European, municipal and parliamentary election campaigns after 2023.
“Was there ever a more united Democratic Rally than on the night of the parliamentary elections?” he asked. When Dalitis asked what had gone wrong since, Neofytou suggested the question be put to the leadership, asking how the unity it now invokes had been blown apart.
‘What comes first: the procedure, or whether we will have a homeland?’
Neofytou again refused to say whether he would seek DISY’s nomination through the party’s procedures. “When the procedures get under way, we will talk about that too,” he told Phileleftheros.
“If some want to bypass the substance by pointing to procedures and mechanisms, that is their absolute right,” he said. “What comes first, I repeat: the procedure, or whether we will have a homeland?”
He rejected suggestions that his candidacy amounted to pressure on the leadership. “I am not blackmailing any decision of the leadership,” he said, also rejecting claims that he was damaging party unity. “I am opposed not to people, but to political conduct and political positions.”
Neofytou said most of the political system had made its peace with the status quo, but he never would, and that he wanted a reunified Cyprus. “My decision to run does not concern only a party I respect, nor only the members of a political camp I fully respect. It concerns society as a whole,” he said.
He said he made clear to Demetriou at a recent meeting that he would run and explained why, and that she said they would meet again.
‘We left New York with yet another deadlock’
“Unfortunately we left New York with yet another deadlock, with only three months left before the end of the Secretary-General’s term and the clouds gathering over Cyprus,” Neofytou said.
Asked about the President’s responsibility, he questioned the decision “to go and put forward 19 new ideas after 52 years, three months before the end of Guterres’s term”, and whether that would win credibility with the international community.
He said he would stand by President Nikos Christodoulides if he chose “the road of a solution and not the road of partition”, as he would stand by anyone who held the office.
Any solution, whether a federation or even a return to the unitary state of 1960, would mean political coexistence and political equality with Turkish Cypriots, Neofytou said. He challenged those opposed to a solution to say so publicly and negotiate for territory. “In the end we will be left with partition, but they want it to arrive quietly so they bear no responsibility,” he said.
‘There is no such possibility’
Asked whether AKEL might back him, Neofytou said: “There is no such possibility.” He credited AKEL with being excellent at identifying problems, but said he goes further and proposes solutions.
On DISY’s decision to allow a conscience vote in the second round of the 2023 presidential election, he said no one who voted for Christodoulides or Andreas Mavroyiannis, or abstained, had broken the party’s principles or its decision. “History will judge whether it was right or wrong,” he said.
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