Parties and candidates are facing the possibility of nightmare scenarios in the double electoral showdown of June 9, with the European and Municipal Elections. A contest with several peculiarities and difficulties due to the complexity arising from the changes brought by the reform of local government.
The impact of the new order of things, with the many ballot papers, the huge number of candidates, and the many elections, is likely to be quite considerable. There are fears that confusion will be caused to many voters and as a result, there will be an increase in the number of blank and invalid ballots.
Into the equation, however, come the many difficulties that the parties themselves have had and continue to have to face, since they have failed to give an ideological and political orientation to the partnerships they sought and ultimately succeeded in the local elections. Partnerships which in many cases have no coherence, since the same party may have entered into a partnership with a political force in one municipality and with another one in a second municipality.
At the meeting of the DISY Political Bureau last September, the course of the partnerships for the Local Government elections was determined. The decision was to exclude the extremes from electoral partnerships.
In essence, DISY ruled out cooperation with AKEL and ELAM and was willing to discuss cooperation with all the other parties. Something that it did, with the party leadership initiating discussions on cooperation with both DIKO and DIPA and to a lesser extent with EDEK. At one point, DISY and DIKO had even come very close at the leadership level to cooperating on a nationwide basis.
DISY essentially wanted to achieve broad cooperation with both parties of the center, thus ruling out bridges of cooperation between DIKO and DIPA and DIKO and AKEL. The party would also rebuild bridges of cooperation with two parties that it had previously cooperated with several times but failed to succeed in the presidential elections. While there was indeed the will and goodwill on the part of the leadership to cooperate on an expanded basis, in practice this proved to be too difficult in the end, running up against the different wishes of local communities.
As a result, DISY has achieved a significant number of partnerships with the DIPA, but in return, it has given support to Christos Tsigis as mayor of Strovolos, the third-largest municipality in Cyprus.
With DIKO, apart from the case of Nicosia, no other cooperation has emerged, at least as far as the main municipalities of free Cyprus are concerned.
AKEL: Invested in the failure of others for partnerships
The left-wing party declared open to partnerships, while DISY, DIKO, and DIPA were already in negotiations for cooperation. The problems in the center-right parties’ cooperation with the DISY had begun to show early on, especially in some municipalities, with AKEL lurking.
AKEL attempted some openings in the case of the Nicosia municipality with personalities such as the well-known lawyer Achilleas Demetriades for mayor of the capital, which did not end positively. Other individuals were approached and cooperation was explored with both DIPA and DIKO.
DIKO: A little right, a little left, and a lot of muttering
Displeasure prevailed in DIKO from the very beginning. The case of Strovolos Municipality with the pressure exerted by the party’s local committees on the case of Stavros Stavrinidis is typical. The delay of the debate, the back and forth of rumors with the case of Andreas Papacharalambous, and the role of the Presidential Palace, left room for DISY to move forward with the cooperation of DIPA and Christos Tsigis. Whom DIKO was not going to support. But the displeasure within the party continued and continues to some extent over the case of the Nicosia Municipality and the cooperation that took place.
The DIKO leadership was asked for strong explanations for this cooperation as it was considered that while their party gave support to both Nikos Tornaritis who is running for Nicosia mayor and to Konstantinos Yiorkatzis who is running for regional governor, it did not secure corresponding support from DISY for its own candidates in another municipality or region of Cyprus.
To a large extent, DIPA managed to cooperate with DISY, by effectively securing support in the case of Christos Tsigis for the Strovolos mayoralty and the Paphos deputy mayoralty with Christos Makarios, as well as for the deputy mayoralties of Ayios Athanasios and Mesa Gitonia.
However, in many municipalities, DIPA cooperates with AKEL, as in the case of Larnaca, and Idalion, while so far no cooperation has progressed with anyone for the position of Pafos regional governor.
EDEK has spread its networks to all sides. In Nicosia, it supports Prountzos for the mayoralty on the one hand, as does AKEL, and on the other, Konstantinos Yiorktatzis for regional governor, together with DISY, DIKO and DIPA. In Strovolos Municipality EDEK supports Christos Tsigis, but in Lakatamia Fotoula Hadjipapa, in Larnaca Andreas Vyra and in Idalion Andreas Joseph.
The Ecologists are so far moving on their autonomous course without any cooperation in sight.
For the first time, ELAM is running in the elections for Local Government, claiming two municipalities. The first is the Municipality of Famagusta with its MP Linos Papagiannis, essentially investing in the frustration and reaction of some of the people of Famagusta to the Turkish actions.
The second case concerns the Municipality of Larnaca, which it claims with its MP, Sotiris Ioannou. A move that was made by taking advantage of the fact that there was no other candidate against the candidacy of Andreas Vyras.
