Paphos mayor will not be deterred, despite threats

Paphos Mayor Phedonas Phedonos said on Friday he would not be deterred from cleaning up the municipality, following the explosion of a low-grade device behind the town hall on Thursday night.

The explosive device went off in a park behind the town hall at around 8pm on Thursday, police said.

According to Paphos police spokesman Nicos Tsiappis, a fire extinguisher was rigged to blow in 28th October park. There were no injuries or property damage.

It was the second such incident in the past two months, according to Tsiappis.

Phedonos told the Cyprus Mail on Friday that if someone wanted to send a message to the municipality’s employees, the elected officials or to him, then that message was received.

“And that message is that we will not stop our efforts to bring transparency in all of the municipality’s dealings and finally put an end to impunity. We have the resolve and we will keep going,” said the mayor.

“We have a lot of stuff on our plate right now. We are looking into dealings regarding the district’s waste management plant, the work done at the town’s coastal road and many others. We are hard at work, and as I said we won’t be deterred.”

The Paphos municipality went through a rough patch recently, after former mayor Savvas Vergas was handed a six-year prison sentence on charges of corruption and money laundering. Phedonos succeeded Vergas in a special election, shortly after the former mayor resigned his post.

 

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.