Kyprianou too ill to receive congratulations

ACTING President Spyros Kyprianou has announced he will not be receiving visitors on his name day tomorrow, because of his recent illness.

Kyprianou recently spent more than a week in hospital after suffering an asthma attack.

“House president and Diko chairman Spyros Kyprianou, due to his recent health adventure and on the advice of his doctors, will not, unfortunately, have the pleasure of welcoming to his home this year, as he has in previous years, all those who honour him with their friendship,” an official announcement read.

On his release from hospital last Saturday, Kyprianou said he was taking up the post of acting President – during Clerides’ absence in New York – with reluctance.

This reluctance had nothing to do with his state of health, he insisted. He wanted to be excused from his temporary Presidential duties because he disagreed so violently with the way President Clerides was handling the Cyprus problem.

Kyprianou said he had asked Attorney-general Alecos Markides to find a “formula” that would allow him to pass on the acting President duties to someone else. Unfortunately, he said, Markides could not find such a recipe.

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.