Akel’s political bureau decides to recommend Spanos – reports 

MAIN opposition Akel is to back businessman Mike Spanos for the upcoming presidential elections, multiple reports said on Friday.

According to the reports on Cybc and other Greek Cypriot media, the party’s political bureau that met on Friday, decided to suggest to the central committee to back Spanos as an independent presidential candidate. The central committee is to meet next week.

Despite alleged leaks to the media, the party officially remains tight-lipped as to its election candidate.

Akel spokesman Stefanos Stefanou had said last month that there was still a long way to go before the party announced its decision, sometime at the beginning of July.

With the exception of former President Demetris Christofias in 2008, Akel has never run a party member for president.

In 2003, it supported Diko leader Tassos Papadopoulos, who won in a first-round landslide.

Fifteen years earlier, Akel managed to elect George Vassiliou, a successful businessman, to the presidency.

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.