AKEL and DISY yesterday locked horns for the umpteenth time in the ongoing political spat between the government and opposition over the Evangelos Florakis debacle.
DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades reiterated his demand for President Demetris Christofias’ resignation and said the president should take political responsibility for the July 11 tragedy.
Anastassiades said if Christofias insisted on clinging to his presidential seat, proclaiming it was his right to govern based on his election to office, then Christofias should answer to the people and call new elections.
The opposition leader accused the government of continually singling out DISY for speaking out against it, as if it was the only political party to do so. Anastassiades also questioned what the president had to say to the thousands of “indignant” citizens who had repeatedly called on him to resign.
The DISY leader also rejected the government’s claims that his critique was simply a manoeuvre to secure the presidential seat for himself and accused AKEL of paranoia that people were out to get Christofias.
But AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou insisted some people were not interested in the truth but only getting their own opinions across. He also said that from the day Christofias had come into power it had been certain peoples’ goal to discredit him.
He said instead of working together to face problems, political parties in Cyprus had launched a campaign to twist the truth and slander for their own petty political goals.
Kyprianou said opposition parties did anything but act responsibly and tolerantly and only cultivated hatred.
“AKEL has for years warned that some people are trying to cultivate fanaticism and hatred against the President of the Republic and AKEL as if AKELites are second class citizens… All this will achieve is creating ruptures in the Cypriot people and bring us to the brink of division,” he said.
Kyprianou accused Anastassiades and DISY of “anticommunist hysteria” and said that even though the Cypriot people had rejected them during the presidential elections, DISY continued to spout the same old rhetoric.
He said AKEL would face and overcome “as many attacks” launched against it and that the Cypriot people would eventually be the objective judges of how the politicians had behaved.
