MAVERICK MEP Marios Matsakis yesterday insisted nothing he had done warranted his expulsion from the ranks of DIKO, attributing the party’s move to an orchestrated campaign at assassinating his political career.
The swashbuckling Matsakis was on everyone’s lips last week when he traipsed into the buffer zone and snatched a Turkish flag from an unmanned guard post. Critics said the stunt was aimed at deflecting attention away from his legal troubles: Matsakis is currently facing allegations of extortion and of illegal dealing in antiquities from the north.
But his daredevil antics did not impress DIKO: at a top-level meeting the party decided Matsakis was no longer part of it, though it stopped short of spelling out that he was being debarred.
Matsakis has contested the decision, claiming he was “tried and sentenced in absentia.” Yesterday he asked the party’s Central Committee to rescind the decision and reassess the issue in his presence.
“I feel the decision was both erroneous and in breach of the party’s charter,” Matsakis said in a statement released from his office in Brussels.
“I have never acted outside the principles of DIKO… on the contrary, my actions were always in line with the party’s practice to struggle against the Turkish occupation,” he said, alluding to the controversy over his escapade in no-man’s-land.
Earlier this week, DIKO big gun Nikos Pittokopitis urged Matsakis to give up his seat in the European Parliament so that it could remain within the party.
“If he’s such a hotshot, let him do the brave thing and relinquish his seat. That is, if he really cares about his party,” Pittokopitis taunted.
“That’s absurd,” Matsakis countered yesterday on state radio.
“It’s like someone tells you to jump off the highest building of Nicosia and you do it – does that make you a hotshot?”
“And what about the police coming to my house and confiscating urns and ancient artefacts? They even brought a counter-terrorism squad along. That’s unheard of.”
The controversial MEP also hit out at what he described as hypocrisy on DIKO’s part, saying the party knew of the criminal investigations against him but still put him on their ballot for the 2004 euro-elections.
“I was elected by the grassroots, by the people. I am accountable to them, not the party,” added Matsakis, who has hinted he might join a different political grouping in the European Parliament.
The once-popular Matsakis, admired by many for his hands-on, straight-talking style, garnered 27,000 votes in the last elections, and was at the time considered one of DIKO’s strongest assets.
But the party has distanced itself from him, saying they were unaware of the extortion allegations at the time Matsakis was running for MEP. However, it is now well known that President Papadopoulos had been formally briefed on the criminal probe into Matsakis as far back as April of last year, well before the euro-elections.
Unless he is prosecuted, Matsakis will retain his seat in the European Parliament and will serve out his five-year term as MEP. But if he loses the seat due to criminal proceedings against him, that will also be the party’ loss.
A spokesman for the European Commission Representation in Cyprus told the Mail yesterday it was “not uncommon” for MEPs to sever their ties with the party on whose ticket they were elected and later join forces with other groupings in the European Parliament.
And Demetris Demetriou, senior administrative officer at the Interior Ministry’s Elections Department, said that – just as with local legislative elections – it was possible for someone to stand as an independent candidate for the euro elections.
“But it’s very difficult for an outsider or an independent to make it,” he added.
“So, yes, it’s possible, but it’s a long shot.”
