Cast your mind back a few months, maybe a year. We all remember the well-orchestrated campaign by Pindarou, DISY’s headquarters, to convince us that everything Nikos Christodoulides and his government did was nothing but electioneering. The refrain never changed, in public statements or in party huddles: the government only cares about 2028. Even the work of Cyprus’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU was squeezed into the same mould.
The dust Pindarou kicked up served a purpose of its own. Once it settled, the real target came into plain view: the very 2028 Pindarou kept pinning on the government.
After last Thursday’s bombshell, when the party leader beat a disorderly retreat from the race to choose the party’s candidate, Pindarou set about selling us Annita Demetriou’s decision as an act of heroism demanding a standing ovation from us all.
Yesterday, the so-called council for monitoring government work, which she set up herself, unveiled the strategy Pindarou had been pursuing all along. The statement’s title: ‘United, with a plan of government for 2028’. And lest anyone miss the point, the council notes that “from day one” it had worked on “the agenda for the parliamentary elections and DISY’s strategy for the 2028 presidential elections”.
DISY’s real concern is 2028, and now it admits it.
For months, every policy and every move of the DISY leadership served a single goal: getting back into power. Every position, every criticism, every statement was measured against one test alone: does it bring the party closer to 2028? And to get there, they seem willing to do whatever it takes.
But there is a second 2028, one you won’t find in any statement: the leadership’s own 2028. If February 2028 turns out to be a rerun of 2023, today’s DISY leadership wants its back covered, so that the result of the presidential election in 16 months’ time, whatever it is, does not touch it. And by leadership, we mean the party presidency, and no other post.
In short, for Annita Demetriou, 2028 matters first and foremost as a date she has to survive politically: keeping the DISY presidency and, with it, the presidency of the House. Everything else being said and written is padding, aimed at a narrow party crowd that never strays beyond the walls of Pindarou.
The same statement contains another line worth pausing on: “We are making our work, analyses and proposals available to all on an equal footing, so that the candidate chosen by the members starts with a complete, evidence-based plan.”
This is an anxious attempt by the DISY leadership to show it still calls the shots. In plain terms, Pindarou wants whoever emerges from the internal contest to adopt the programme drawn up by Demetriou and her team. It is also a way of shielding herself: whoever the candidate is, they will be carrying her plan.
And why on earth should Averof Neofytou or Giorgos Pamporidis wait for Annita Demetriou and her clique to write their election manifesto for them? Can’t they do it themselves, with their own people?
So, a complete, evidence-based plan. Yet the statement contains not a single proposal. Presumably they are saving them for later, when they can show they have all the answers. Because if they reveal them now, the government might copy them!
This was the aim of the Pindarou leadership from the start: to win the 2028 presidential election by cashing in on whatever problems the country faces. The very thing it spent months accusing the government of, it now openly admits.
