By a Staff Reporter
OUTGOING Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides yesterday announced he would run for the DISY Presidency, challenging current leader Nicos Anastassiades for leadership of the party.
The announcement comes in the run-up to party elections on March 23, at a time when internal party splits are still raw following DISY’s defeat in the Presidential elections.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday, Cassoulides said that as a DISY leadership candidate he would take it upon himself to lead the party, with the aim of broadening and enlarging DISY to embrace the centre of the political spectrum.
Cassoulides stressed that DISY needed a leader with “political purpose… and not an inward-looking party leader.”
“The politics of belligerence and raised voices has failed,” he said, adding that DISY needed to return to its roots and define itself through a plurality of views.
A poll conducted by SRI Ltd between February 22 and 23 suggests that Cassoulides is the favourite to take over the party leadership.
The findings of the poll, based on the responses of 633 people, show that 43 per cent of party members would vote for Casoulides, and 35 per cent for current leader Nicos Anastassiades. The remaining 22 per cent were not sure.
Asked which candidate was most likely to secure the unity of the party, a resounding 63 per cent said Casoulides, and just 24 per cent chose Anastassiades. Fourteen per cent were unsure.
Last Sunday, Anastassiades urged an end to the bickering over DISY’s electoral defeat, but said he would step down if it would bring unity to the party.
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.
