After the presidential elections in February, as is known, the crisis in DISY had begun, but what remained unforgettable is a revelation made by Haris Georgiades: “It cannot be heard that the DISY register was given to AKEL,” he said on television.
And this was between the first and second round of elections when the candidates were Nikos Christodoulides as the candidate of the center-right and Andreas Mavrogiannis as the candidate of AKEL.
Some in DISY believed that the members and supporters of the party were under their thumb and could be lent out.
It was never confirmed that the register was indeed given to AKEL, but what happened the week before the second Sunday was as if it had been given.
They convened, they discussed intensely, they quarrelled but ultimately decided to vote conscientiously on the second Sunday.
Immediately after this decision, top officials for a week were calling members to persuade them to vote for Mavroyiannis. As we wrote then, one of them, who was also a government official close to the President, overdid it with the phone calls, to the point where he almost got a tongue-lashing from Anastasiades when he found out.
Who will forget, after all, Giannakis Kasoulides who came out first and foremost to urge the party supporters to make the breakthrough and vote for the AKEL candidate?
That was how passionate they were to defeat Christodoulides.
When today, the volcano that had been simmering since then erupted, they continue to attribute all their problems to the defeat in the presidential elections and not to what happened between the first and second round of elections, which means they understood nothing.
And they want to save the country!
Certainly, if they had won the elections, everything would have been hunky-dory. So, everything that followed and what is happening today is also owed to the defeat.
However, the main reason for the crisis is the management of the defeat that followed and not the defeat itself.
They self-promote themselves as politicians of the modern European party of Cyprus, realists and followers of Glafkos Clerides who could enjoy both defeats and victories with the same calmness and foresight, but they behaved irresponsibly, unpolitically, thoughtlessly, guided only by a vengeful mania, which has no place in politics.
They didn’t want to examine why they lost the elections and take responsibility for their actions.
They decided to attribute it entirely to Nikos Christodoulides, who until then was a member of their party and whose voters were also their voters.
So, they fell flat on their faces to manipulate the “free will,” the conscience, of their voters in favour of the AKEL candidate. Secretly. As conspirators. As fanatical youths in student elections.
And they threw the political ethics of public life to the winds.
Now, they’re searching to find them. But where will they find them? They haven’t even engaged in self-criticism yet. They thought everything would remain covered up under the rug they hid it under.
But, as soon as one of them, who fought the candidacy of Averof and supported Christodoulides, former MP Kostakis Konstantinou, asked to be their candidate in the Paphos local elections, the rug overflowed and the abnormalities surfaced again.
One blames Anastasiades, another blames Averof, another blames Annita, and the third and best (as they say) Kasoulides appears as the wise reservist to tell them again that “the defection created a great wound and led to our defeat”…
But when, for goodness’ sake? A year ago? And you still haven’t closed the wound? And is it the defection’s fault that the wound remained open?
So, they still haven’t understood what they did, and therefore, the continuation will be suspenseful.
