By Martin Hellicar
A DIKO leadership contender yesterday charged the party incumbents with breaking every rule in the book to get their way at a rowdy party conference over the weekend.
The conference approved a motion to postpone leadership elections until November, which was what party leader Spyros Kyprianou and others in the party leadership wanted.
But Kypros Chrysostomides alleged yesterday that the leadership had employed “undemocratic methods” during the conference in Nicosia.
Sunday’s proceedings were marred by shouting matches and even fist-fights between rival supporters of Chrysostomides and Kyprianou.
Chrysostomides said the party leadership had threatened to refuse to resign if the conference did not approve a motion for leadership elections in November. He said an opposing motion, for earlier elections, was not even put to the vote.
“Also, despite the fact that a secret ballot was asked for, as provided for by the party constitution, the leadership refused to accept such a procedure,” Chrysostomides said.
“They imposed an open show of hands vote so that the real feelings of the delegates would not show,” he said. “Also, on the invitation of the leadership, a large number of non-delegates voted in the open vote when they had no right to.”
“Everything was arranged to ensure the leadership stayed in place,” the challenger claimed.
Replying to Chrysostomides’s claims, Kyprianou said later the conference had heard opinions expressed “with complete openness.”
He defended the decision not to hold a secret ballot to decide the issue of when to hold leadership elections by saying it would “only have wasted conference time” as “the debate had plainly shown the overwhelming majority of the delegates supported the motion”.
The Diko leader dismissed the rowdy behaviour at the conference as attributable to a “minority element” within the party.
Kyprianou did not hide the fact that he was very pleased with the outcome of the conference. He said that while he did not plan to stay on as Diko leader indefinitely, he believed he could “contribute to the creation of a very strong party of the centre”.
The conference also decided to call on rebel Diko deputies Alexis Galanos and Katerina Pantelidou to abandon their House seats. Galanos and Pantelidou broke ranks with the centre-right party over its decision to back challenger George Iacovou in the February presidential elections.
Galanos retorted yesterday that he was an independent. The deputy has set up his own party since the elections.
Galanos said he was “saddened” by the goings-on at the Diko conference.
The party has been ridden with strife ever since Iacovou’s narrow defeat in the elections.
