By Martin Hellicar
A SIMMERING dispute between former Diko Minister Dinos Michaelides and his party leader, Spyros Kyprianou, boiled over into open disagreement yesterday.
Michaelides said Diko was still seeking ways to resurrect its defunct government coalition partnership with Disy, while Kyprianou repeated that his party was now in opposition.
Last week, Kyprianou ordered Michaelides (then Interior Minister) and four other Diko Ministers to abandon their posts. The Diko leader was smarting at Clerides’s decision to stand for re-election, which dashed any hopes he might have had that Disy would support him in the February presidentials.
Michaelides, and the other four departing Ministers, risked the wrath of their party leader by heeding a plea from Clerides to stay on in their posts till replacements were found. The five ministers, and Michaelides in particular, also made it plain they regretted having to leave Clerides’s government.
The issue was closed yesterday as Clerides swore in five new ministers, but Michaelides seemed to pick another point on which to defy Kyprianou.
“We (Diko) are not yet talking of being in opposition,” he stated on leaving the swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. “The two parties are still working on ways to co-operate, this has been stated by the leaders of both parties,” he said.
“We are at a stage of negotiations which could lead to a resurrection of the Disy-Diko alliance,” he said, adding that he hoped the coalition would be re-created.
Kyprianou’s response was terse: “I don’t know in what context Michaelides made his comments, but I can tell you Diko is certainly in the opposition.”
He repeated that Diko was talking to all parties concerning possible alliances for February. He did not preclude an alliance with Disy, provided this was not to back Clerides, but nor did he rule out the possibility of Diko supporting the chosen candidate of left-wing Akel, George Iacovou.
Other names in the hat for the elections so far are United Democrats’ leader George Vassiliou, Edek leader Vassos Lyssarides and Liberals leader Nicos Rolandis.
