Galanos miffed at Spyros snub

EUROPEAN Renewal Party (Kea) chief Alexis Galanos yesterday said that he had been repeatedly told by House President Spyros Kyprianou that he had no place on the platform during Saturday’s pro-Serb rally in Nicosia’s Eleftheria Square.

Galanos called a news conference yesterday to say that Kyprianou had told him not to join other political leaders on the stage “three or four times”, and that he had eventually attended the gathering standing in the crowd.

“This message could not only have come from the House president; he probably discussed it with the leaders of the parties that were there,” Galanos added.

He said the decision that “Kea is not a party so it should be excluded from the event” had not been given due consideration, and wondered what criteria defined a political party in the eyes of other parliamentary groups.

Galanos said he has raised the matter with Attorney-general Alecos Markides.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.