GOVERNMENT party AKEL’s leader Andros Kyprianou was contacted last week by party supporters looking for political favours, it emerged yesterday.
As a result of a misplaced click of a computer mouse, AKEL yesterday emailed to all its media contacts a summary of Kyprianou’s phone messages from last Friday, which included a proposed “quid pro quo” over a senior public sector job and a request for a political favour.
The email was intended for Kyprianou, but instead his secretary mistakenly sent it to everyone on the party’s media mailing list yesterday afternoon.
The first of two items that raise questions of rusfeti (political favours) relates to an appointment to the position of senior customs officer.
A Michalis Pittadjis – the email contains the full names of all concerned and the mobile numbers of the callers – rang to inform Kyprianou that the brother of AKEL deputy Skevi Koukouma was being put forward for the job.
Pittadjis suggested, the email went on, that since Niki Hadjiyiannis – the wife of DIKO district councillor Andreas Hadjiyiannis – also wants the job “and she will take retirement in 14 months, let her be given the opportunity and then afterwards our man gets promoted.”
Pittadjis also passed on the message that he had told someone to “phone (DIKO leader) Marios Garoyian and tell him to make approaches to you (Kyprianou) and the President, so that Garoyian also feels indebted towards AKEL and the President.”
This particular note ends: “Michalis says that if M.Gar. does not make a move, you should not do anything.”
The second note that suggests a request for political favours relates to a Yiorgos Stylianides, who rang to protest loudly that AKEL had “not done anything” to help him, despite his asking for help last year. His sister had been employed as a cleaner at the US Embassy, and “they fired her.”
The note goes on: “He wants to speak to you. Will not say about what. Elections are coming and he told Eve and (ex-Omonia football player) Sotiris Caiaphas that he will not vote for us again.”
During a press conference called early yesterday evening, AKEL spokesman Stavros Evagorou expressed his party’s regret that “a mistake made in sending an email message has been turned into an attempt to create an issue in the media”.
Evagorou said that “just as surely occurs with other political parties, and especially with Cyprus’ biggest party, quite a few people contact them every day, either to express their views, or to make some complaint, or to ask for specific help with a problem they are facing.”
He went on: “We as AKEL are judged on how we act to support the people, and not on whether people’s various requests, problems or opinions are deemed to be justified or unjustified.”
Evagorou ended on a defiant note, saying: “As people know very well, AKEL always behaves within the framework of transparency and meritocracy.”
The phenomenon of cronyism or rusfeti has become a familiar part of the political process over decades, with each successive government marking its accession to power – and encouraging future loyalty – by appointing faithful and/or generous supporters to positions in governmental departments, semi-governmental organisations or quangos.
DIKO and DISY have each faced accusations in the past, but what is new is that this is the first time there has been an AKEL government. Last year saw a huge political row over the government’s list of transfers in the police force, with DISY launching the same kind of broadside against AKEL that it had faced on the same subject when the roles were reversed under President Glafcos Clerides.
Asked about the email during a press conference earlier yesterday afternoon, DISY press spokesman Haris Georgiades said that after reading it, “any comment is superfluous”.
