Former DISY leader Averof Neofytou on Tuesday accused senior party figures of leaving DISY with no distinct political position from President Nikos Christodoulides’s government. He again refused to say whether he would seek the party’s nomination for the presidential elections or run as an independent.
Speaking at a press conference at the Hilton, Neofytou said he was not “running for the sake of running”. He said his candidacy had been announced without preconditions or exclusions. He set out two national goals: reuniting Cyprus and creating a truly fair society.
Neofytou announced his candidacy on Sunday. The next day, DISY leader Annita Demetriou said she would put herself forward to party members through DISY’s internal procedures.
Neofytou repeatedly declined to go further on the nomination. He said he would state his position on procedure once the party’s internal process was under way. “I am a politician, I speak politically about substance,” he said. Asked about a consensus candidate agreed with Demetriou or Pamborides, he said he did not rule anything out. He complained, however, that procedure was crowding out debate on the big political issues facing the country.
Criticism of DISY
Neofytou said he would not clash with former President Nicos Anastasiades on a personal level, but would answer him politically. He said that after the parliamentary elections, Anastasiades, who is also a former DISY leader, had called Christodoulides “flesh of our flesh” and referred to DISY as a governing party. He said DISY’s second-in-command had said the party should not rule out governing alongside Christodoulides. He also said Nikos Tornaritis had until recently been saying the party should not rule Christodoulides out.
“How can you have a distinct political proposal when members have come to believe we are one and the same, that we agree on foreign policy, the Cyprus problem and the economy?” he said. “How, in the final stretch of the parliamentary elections, can you think you are a credible alternative for government when you are almost part of it?”
He said DIKO leader Nikolas Papadopoulos, whose party is the only one in government, had often set himself apart from the government far more clearly than DISY had over the past three and a half years.
Neofytou said that over the past two days some people, “not all, to be fair”, had been waving the flag of unity and political ethics at him. He said these were the same people who had torn both to shreds.
Asked about his remark on Monday that someone who has been betrayed must make sure it does not happen again, he said he could not go through what he went through in 2023 again. “A wise man does not make the same mistake twice,” he said. Asked how the remark should be read, he said: “You will hear it at the right time.”
The dinner
Neofytou welcomed confirmation from Politis publisher Chris Panayiotou that the dinner at a Nicosia fish tavern had taken place. He said his candidacy had nothing to do with it. He said he and Panayiotou had not spoken in Panayiotou’s capacity as publisher, but declined to say in what capacity they had.
On Monday, Neofytou said on the philenews vidcast that he had been promised over dinner that DISY would unite behind his presidential bid. In return, he said, he was asked to help Demetriou win re-election as House president. Panayiotou said in a statement published by Politis that no deal on the 2028 elections was or could have been made at the dinner. He also accused Neofytou of pettiness for turning a private conversation into a weapon for his candidacy.
Cyprus problem
Neofytou said he could not stay politically absent after Cypriots heard UN envoy María Ángela Holguín say on Monday that the window for the Cyprus problem was closing. He said he had unfortunately expected this since the previous weekend. Cyprus has been divided for 52 years, he said, adding that he would not come to terms with a divided homeland.
He said Christodoulides might be the only President under whom no negotiations took place. He said he had fallen out with some of his closest political friends for saying he would stand by the President if he went for a solution.
Turkey was creating obstacles and benefited from the status quo, he said, but that was not enough of an explanation. The government had presented Cyprus as having its strongest foreign policy ever, with very strong ties to the United States, the EU and the Jewish lobby. Yet Cyprus had failed, he said, to get even the EU to condemn the intransigence and blame Turkey and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman for the deadlock.
He said the government issued contradictory statements that made headlines for a moment. “We cannot say one day that we want negotiations to start, and the next convene the National Council so the President can explain the 19 new ideas he has submitted, as if the Cyprus problem started yesterday,” he said.
Economy and society
Neofytou said the economy was performing well but the political system was failing to redistribute its gains and tackle social inequality. He said society was split into thirds: one third doing well, one third struggling to get to the end of the month and one third unable to make ends meet. He called this the biggest failure in managing the country’s economic prosperity. He said full cost-of-living allowance should not be decided for only one section of society.
Addressing the journalists in the room, he said most young journalists did not take home 1,800 euros net a month, and asked whether that was a fair state. He said education results released on Sunday had put the country at the bottom. He added that politicians had waited until the first day of school to visit schools and talk.
“I want to lead so that we wake up from the lethargy we mistake for security,” he said.
