MEP and YouTuber Fidias Panayiotou announced the launch of his own political party. He had promised a big announcement to his followers in the previous days through social media posts.
Panayiotou made the announcement he had promoted as a “rendezvous at 12:00”.
The name of the party is Direct Democracy, Panayiotou stated, while wearing a clown nose.
Panayiotou had previously used social media posts to prepare his audience for the impending announcement.
Panayiotou called the announcement the “most important announcement of [his] life”. He stated that after being elected MEP over a year ago, he saw in practice that an independent politician “cannot change things on his own”.
“I concluded, kids, that to achieve the change we want, we must gain power in the Parliament,” he said. He announced they were starting a new process to form a political party, which he imagined would be “something completely different from the others”.
Panayiotou stated the party purpose “will be to give the system another slap”, and this time, try to change it “from the inside”.
He asserted that with the current way democracy works, decisions are made by people who vote once every five years. He believes the time has come for this model “to end” and be replaced by a new kind of democracy that is “more direct, more democratic”.
Panayiotou said this new democracy would allow every citizen to participate in discussions, decisions, “and even the votes themselves”. Based on these ideas, the party’s name is “Direct Democracy”.
New party seeks ‘direct’ change via app-based voting
The central idea, Panayiotou explained, is to take decisions “together” through an app that allows everyone to participate in the party’s procedures.
For example, he said the 56 parliamentary candidates to be placed on the party’s ballot for the May 2026 elections would be chosen by the public “through a democratic vote on our app”.
Anyone would be eligible to claim a position on the ballot, including those watching the video, he added.
Panayiotou stated that even after the elections, if the party manages to elect some parliamentarians, they could use the app to jointly decide “what we will vote on important issues in Parliament”.
He acknowledged that what they are trying to do “has not happened before” and admitted that he does not yet have a clear picture of how they will set up and operate the mechanism. Panayiotou noted that, like all new things, it has a high probability of failure.
However, he said it is certainly “something very different from what we are used to until now,” and he believes it will “surely rock the boat”.
He concluded that the idea is worth trying and could potentially help create a “new kind of democracy” and become the beginning of a “more democratic, more vibrant, and fairer future”, possibly “not just in Cyprus but in the rest of the world, if it succeeds”.
Panayiotou ended by telling his audience he loves them “from the bottom of [his] heart” and is “excited about this new beginning”.
