DISY leader Annita Demetriou said on Monday she will seek the party’s nomination for the presidential elections, a day after former leader Averof Neofytou announced his own candidacy and left open the possibility of running outside party procedures.
Speaking after an expanded meeting of the party leadership, to which party veterans including Ioannis Kasoulides and Harris Georgiades were invited, Demetriou said she felt it was the least she could do, and her responsibility as party president, to put herself before the members. “DISY is here and will have a candidate,” she said, adding that this would be for the good of its members and of the country.
Shortly after her announcement, Neofytou’s political office invited journalists to a press conference on Tuesday, at which he may clarify his intentions.
Earlier on Monday, Demetriou said Neofytou had the right to take whatever position he wished, but that the party was obliged to follow its procedures and its charter. As party president and guardian of the charter, she said, that is exactly what she would do.
Neofytou’s account
Speaking on Philenews’s Politics Vidcast on Monday, Neofytou said he had met Demetriou and a person he described as her closest associate at a well-known fish tavern in Nicosia before the parliamentary elections. With Demetriou present, the associate asked him to help get her elected and for everyone to go into the presidential elections united behind the same candidate, he said.
Neofytou told party supporters he had never hurt any genuine DISY supporter and never would. But he added that “someone who has been betrayed never betrays”, while saying he must also make sure he is not betrayed again.
He said he had watched officials talk about unity in recent days, but that most of them had torn up unity and political ethics and thrown them in the bin. He rejected claims that he was trying to blackmail the party into decisions ahead of the presidential elections and said he was not the one causing problems for its unity. He also asked whether DISY had ever been more united than on the night of the parliamentary election results.
Georgiades confirmed Neofytou’s account, saying Neofytou had also told him about the meeting privately. Speaking on ALPHA’s midday programme, Georgiades questioned how a commitment from a non-party figure and a journalist, who are seen, in one way or another, as close to Demetriou, could bind the party. “In what way do they commit the Democratic Rally?” he asked.
He also asked how such a commitment could bind him or Giorgos Pamborides. Pamborides had also expressed interest in standing, fully within his rights under the charter and the party’s democratic procedures, Georgiades said.
Anastasiades criticism
Former President Nicos Anastasiades, DISY’s honorary president, criticised Neofytou for announcing his candidacy. Speaking on SIGMA’s midday programme, he said sudden decisions created an unpleasant climate and bitterness among the party’s members, friends and supporters. Any differences arising during consultations should be settled through dialogue, mutual respect and understanding, he argued.
Anastasiades said Neofytou had every right to want to be a candidate. But since Neofytou had been so strict about observing the charter, what he was doing now fell outside proper political conduct, he added.
“Party unity, which also helps the country, comes before personal ambitions,” Anastasiades said. A weakened or divided party could offer only ridicule and sorrow to its thousands of members, who had fought for more than 50 years and shown they had the strength, together with the party, to serve the country, he added.
He said the cart had been put before the horse, arguing that the party should first have discussed which political forces it could cooperate with.
Anastasiades also criticised Neofytou and the DISY leadership for labelling Nikos Christodoulides a “traitor” in 2023.
Timetable
The DISY leadership also set a timetable for choosing the candidate. Phileleftheros understands that internal candidacies will be submitted on October 15 and the process completed by the end of November. The initial idea was to hold the vote on Sunday, November 15, but that date coincides with the memorial service for DISY founder Glafcos Clerides, so the vote will most likely move a week later to November 22.
The party’s Executive Bureau meets on Tuesday to effectively endorse the leadership’s proposal and set a date for a Political Bureau meeting, which will take the final decisions. For the first time, all DISY members will choose the party’s presidential candidate, voting at ballot boxes countrywide. About 43,000 members are eligible to vote, Phileleftheros understands, and about half voted in the party’s leadership election in March 2023.
