All female leadership in Nicosia?

NICOSIA could soon very well be governed by an all-female team.

Centre-right party DIKO has proposed councillor Soulla Colakidou as their choice for deputy mayor, to replace Stelios Ieronymides who has moved to Parliament.

Those eligible to vote on the nomination were the 26 members of the Executive Board, the 39 members of the Central Committee and the five members of the municipal team.

The voting took place yesterday in Nicosia, where 61 out of the 70 eligible voters made their choice by secret ballot.

It was a tight contest; while Colakidou took 24 of the votes, Kostas Mavrides took 22, whilst Andreas Mougis, who had been predicted as Colakidou’s closest rival, only took 15. Nikos Petsas had withdrawn his candidature before the voting began.

Despite reports of fears among voters that the election results would not be respected, reportedly after intervention from Alekos Trifonidis, the Chairman of the Provincial Committee of DIKO Nicosia, all three candidates agreed to honour the results.

According to commentators, the contest exposed the differences within the DIKO party; while Mavrides was principally supported by the so-called ‘Tassiki’ side of the party (those supporting the late president Papadopoulos’ hard line stance on the Cyprus issue), Colakidou had the warm support of Markos Kyprianou and the nicknamed ‘Kyprianiki’ side of the party.

Colakidou met yesterday with representatives of AKEL, EDEK and the Greens in DIKO’s Nicosia headquarters and in the presence of current mayor Eleni Mavrou.

It is expected that they will support her candidature when she runs against the DISY’s nomination, Nicos Nouris, in the final elections today at the municipal council.

If Colakidou’s candidature is successful, the capital of Cyprus will have a leadership made up of two women, a first.

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.