THE HOUSE yesterday decided by majority vote not to change the date of the May general elections.
The issue was settled during a meeting held in the morning between party leaders and representatives.
The parties decided that the elections would be held as scheduled on May 27, despite strong disagreement from ruling DISY.
The House will dissolve on April 19.
DISY insisted that the date should have been brought either forward or back to give Cypriots living abroad, mostly students, the chance to come home and vote.
After the meeting, DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades said that, despite his party’s disagreement, the elections would go ahead as planned.
“Unfortunately, all the other parties insisted on May 27, which essentially deprives 14,000 new voters of the chance to exercise their right.”
Anastassiades hinted that certain civil servants had dragged their feet in processing constitutional and legislative amendments, which would have opened the way for Cypriots abroad to vote at the embassies.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Anastassiades added.
“We have discussed the issue for years and those officials who today are citing various problems should have worked on ways to overcome them.”
Main opposition AKEL parliamentary spokesman Andreas Christou said that if the date had been changed it would have created more problems than it would have solved.
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.
