DISY will hold an electoral assembly on November 14 to choose its presidential candidate, with nominations due on October 13. Former party leader Averof Neofytou said at a press conference on Tuesday that he was “not running just for the sake of running”.
The party’s Executive Bureau set the timetable at a meeting on Tuesday morning, and the Political Bureau is due to ratify it on Friday afternoon. Nominations will be submitted on Tuesday, October 13, between 9.30am and 12.30pm. Polls at the electoral assembly on Saturday, November 14, will open at 9am and close at 6pm.
Asked about a consensus solution with party leader Annita Demetriou or Giorgos Pamborides, Neofytou said he did not rule anything out. His candidacy had been announced without preconditions or exclusions, he said. He added that he could not go through what he went through in 2023 again, citing an ancient Greek saying that a wise man does not make the same mistake twice.
Neofytou said procedures were dominating the debate as a way of sidestepping the big political issues facing the country. He would set the procedures aside and stick to the substance of politics, as he had for decades, mistakes and omissions included.
Pamborides
DISY parliament member Giorgos Pamborides, who has publicly said he wants to seek the party’s nomination for the presidency, said he would make his final decision on whether to stand in the coming days.
On Alpha’s midday programme, Pamborides said he could only express sadness at what was happening. “What is happening is an operetta that does no one credit,” he said. It was, in his words, a tragic picture that had to be put right at all costs.
DISY should not take the votes it won at the elections for granted, he said. Some people mistakenly believed those votes were capital deposited in an investment account. In fact they were borrowed, and the public had given the party time, he said.
Anastasiades and Neofytou clash
At the press conference, Neofytou criticised statements by former President Nicos Anastasiades, including a reference to a “governing” faction, arguing that DISY’s position as an opposition party was unclear.
Anastasiades hit back sharply, calling on Neofytou to follow the party’s statutory procedures. Neofytou could not criticise DISY’s opposition stance while he still sat on the party’s highest bodies, he said. Anastasiades also warned that DISY risked losing the elections.
Party leadership
Vice-president Savia Orfanidou, speaking on Omega’s midday programme, called on Neofytou to say openly whether he intends to run through the party’s statutory procedures. A candidacy outside the party would be catastrophic, she said, adding that she did not even want to contemplate it.
Orfanidou and deputy president Efthymios Diplaros, who repeated his challenge to Neofytou over AKEL, brushed aside the dinner. No dinner was a matter for the party’s collective bodies, they said.
The dinner
Neofytou has referred to the dinner, at a well-known fish tavern in Nicosia, on ‘Vidcast Philenews’ and in television appearances. Pamborides has publicly called for an explanation of the dinner and of what was said there.
Businessman Chris Panayiotou, publisher of the Politis newspaper, said in a written statement that no political agreement was made at the dinner with Neofytou, Demetriou and Politis director Dionysis Dionysiou.
For almost two years, as publisher, he had been meeting political leaders to discuss the Cyprus problem, the economy, politics and other issues facing the country, Panayiotou said. He did the same with all politicians. Presenting the dinner as an agreement on the 2028 presidential elections was laughable to say the least, he said, and no such agreement had been or could have been made. “Who, really, could commit an entire party over a plate of food?” he said.
People close to Demetriou denied that anything was said in her presence about the House presidency or the presidency of the Republic.
Asked at the press conference about Panayiotou’s statement, Neofytou said only that he was glad Panayiotou had confirmed the dinner. In reply to another question, he said he had not met him as publisher of Politis, but did not elaborate.
