Former DISY leader Averof Neofytou has said he was promised at a dinner in a Nicosia fish tavern that the party would unite behind his presidential bid. In return, he said, he was asked to help DISY leader Annita Demetriou win re-election as House president.
Neofytou said the promise came from the person he described as Demetriou’s closest associate, who had invited him to the dinner, and that Demetriou was there when it was made. He later clarified on Omega’s ‘Enimerosi Tora’ programme that the person was not a politician.
He made the claim to philenews journalist Frixos Dalitis on the philenews vidcast, in his first interview since his surprise announcement that he would run in the 2028 presidential elections.
The DISY leadership appears to have responded straight away to what Neofytou said on Monday morning, speeding up decisions on the party’s internal procedures and drawing up a proposal on timetables. Demetriou announced on Monday that she would seek the party’s nomination, putting herself before DISY members.
Neofytou, who has called a press conference for 10am on Tuesday, again declined to say directly whether he would seek the nomination through the party’s internal process or put his candidacy to the public regardless of the party’s collective decisions. He said he would only set out his intentions clearly if and when the party formally started its procedures.
“Someone who has been betrayed never betrays, but at the same time they must make sure they are not betrayed again,” he said.
He said he respected DISY but was not seeking its support alone, adding that his candidacy was for the whole of society and all of Cyprus’s political parties.
Party unity
Neofytou said he had never hurt any genuine DISY supporter and never would. He said that in recent days he had watched party officials talk about unity, adding: “Most of them turned unity and political ethics into a worthless scrap of paper and threw it in the bin.” Asked whether the remark was aimed at Efthymios Diplaros, he said he was not referring to anyone personally.
He rejected suggestions that he was holding the party’s decisions to ransom ahead of the presidential elections, and said he was not the one threatening its cohesion. He asked whether DISY had ever been more united than on the night of the parliamentary election results, and whether anything had given its supporters more joy than Demetriou’s re-election as House president for a second five-year term.
“Was Averof the reason for the infighting?” he said. “Ask others how they blew up the unity they are invoking today.”
He said he had stood by Demetriou when others publicly told her to back down. “When they had her cornered, I stood by her […] I didn’t need any dinner to do my duty,” he said.
Neofytou said he was running for president because he wanted a reunified Cyprus, and would work alongside those who wanted change. He said Cyprus’s parties and politicians had “learnt to make themselves comfortable managing the status quo, dealing with the few who are growing their capital and not with the citizens who are struggling to make ends meet”.
Asked whether the reference to “a fair society” in his candidacy announcement signalled a move to the left, he smiled and said there was no chance AKEL would back him. He acknowledged the left’s social conscience, saying it was “excellent” at documenting the problem. “The difference, and I say this humbly, is that I don’t stop at the problem,” he said.
