Palace meeting avoids Disy rift

By Charlie Charalambous

DISY’S big day at the Presidential Palace ended with the party no closer to resolving a bitter internal feud over the recent reshuffle.

Yesterday’s meeting had been touted as an opportunity for party dissenters Prodromos Prodromou and Demetris Syllouris to air their views at a meeting of Disy’s political office with President Glafcos Clerides.

But it seems that government policy was the only thing discussed as government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou confirmed that Disy’s bitter internal wrangle was kept off the agenda.

Prodromou was expelled from Disy’s political office after criticising the party’s lack of ministerial clout following last week’s reshuffle which saw junior partner United Democrats get a significant share of the spoils, with the UD’s Papapetrou and Health Minister Frixos Savvides joining Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous in government.

Syllouris also joined the fray, claiming Clerides was abandoning his hard line on the Cyprus problem in favour of the more moderate approach adopted by United Democrat George Vassiliou when he was president.

But yesterday the party was apparently relieved to discover that Clerides was keeping on-message with his Cyprus problem policies.

“Complete answers were given to all the questions. I was absolutely satisfied with what the president said,” Disy boss Nicos Anastassiades said after the meeting.

“No issues were raised on differences of opinion within the party and the president wasn’t asked to intervene,” he added.

The two dissenters were not saying much afterwards either, and Anastassiades suggested that Prodromou would stay out in the cold for the time being.

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.