By Constantinos Psillides
NEWLY-ELECTED Paphos mayor Fedonas Fedonos has pledged that he will institute safeguards to ensure that nothing like the sewerage scandal ever happens again, while at the same time he will focus on getting the town prepared to be Europe’s cultural capital in 2017.
Fedonos, who won by 49.08 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s election, told the Cyprus Mail on Monday that eradicating corruption was amongst his first priorities.
“We need to clean our house. We need to put safeguards in place to ensure transparency in all of our dealings so we can regain the public’s confidence,” said Fedonos.
During his campaign the mayor promised that he will push for an 8 per cent maximum limit on budget increases for all projects after the contracts are signed. Fedonos had said then that his plan was to force contractors to be precise in their bid submission, noting that anything over 8 per cent would come out of the contractors’ pockets.
Asked to comment on the low voter turnout – 46.6 per cent of voters didn’t bother showing up – Fedonos said that he was not at all surprised.
“What did we really expect to happen? The public was shocked and fed up by scandals and government officials that instead of serving the people’s interests were looking out for themselves. They are angered, they are frustrated and that’s why they didn’t show up to vote,” he said.
The mayoral election was held to replace DIKO’s Savvas Vergas who resigned his post as he became the focus of a corruption investigation connected to the construction of the town’s sewerage system.
Along with Vergas, police have charged the sewerage board director Eftychios Malekkides, former municipal DIKO councillor Efstathios Efstathiou, former DISY councillor Giorgos Michaelides, former AKEL councillor Vasos Vasileiou and current AKEL councillor Giorgos Sialis.
Fedonos said that the unusual high level of abstention should force political parties to reconsider their tactics. “The people are done with party politics. They want new approaches. New ideas. Not party officials deliberating behind closed doors to decide on candidates.”
Fedonos main rival was Aristos Vasileiades, a candidate backed by the three major parties AKEL, DIKO and EDEK. While the three parties combined had over 60 per cent in the Paphos over the last elections, they only manage to scrape 27.5 per cent of Sunday’s vote.
Fedonos was backed by ruling DISY but the former municipal councillor despite being elected as a member of the ruling party, has often clashed with them. During his campaign Fedonos went to great lengths to highlight that he was not party hack, focusing on the fact that had he distanced himself from other DISY municipal councillors when the scandal started unravelling.
Fedonos was a prominent figure in highlighting the scandal, appearing often on TV in his capacity as a municipal councillor. Fedonos, a local reporter for daily Politis and a municipality employee all received death threats from Vergas when the case first started to catch the public’s eye.
The sewerage board scandal, perhaps the biggest of all the scandals revealed in Paphos in recent years, entailed government officials receiving kickbacks in order to award tenders to various contractors. The contractors would then request for a budget increase, which was summarily approved with no oversight.
