Efstathiou announces break with Socio-democratic party

THE NEW Socio-Democratic party appears threatened with disintegration barely weeks after its formation.

Prominent party member Efstathios Efstathiou has rocked the boat by announcing that he and other former Edek members are preparing to set up their own socialist party, to be called the Union of Democratic Socialists.

The Socio-Democratic party was created late last year by the merger of Vassos Lyssarides’ socialist Edek and fringe groups the Renewal Movement and Independent Personalities.

Efstathiou’s splinter group has said it plans officially to declare itself as a new party after the Socio-Democratic party’s first electoral conference in October.

Yet Efstathiou, a well-known lawyer, insists the aim of his breakaway group is not to tear apart the Socio-Democratic party.

Socio-Democratic party spokesman Marinos Sizopoulos was keen to echo this non-separatist line yesterday.

Efstathiou said the aim in forming this new party was not to "harm" the Socio-Democratic party. He said his group’s main aim was to implement the simple proportional representation system for party elections that the Socio-Democratic party had not adopted. Efstathiou also said the Union of Democratic Socialists would seek to appeal to those centrist voters the Socio-Democratic party did not represent.

Sizopoulos said he welcomed the fact that the Efstathiou group did not represent a "defection." He said the Socio-democratic party was open to dialogue with the splinter group.

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.