Lillikas to come in from political cold with bid for president

FORMER Foreign Minister George Lillikas is poised to run for President in 2013, local press reports said yesterday.

Daily Politis said Lillikas, lost in the political wilderness for over two years, would be making an announcement soon, perhaps as early as next month.

Lillikas began his political career as an aide to former president George Vasiliou, who came to power in 1988 with the support of communist AKEL. He was later elected MP on an AKEL ticket and appointed Commerce Minister during the Papadopoulos administration in which AKEL was a coalition partner.

He was later appointed Foreign Minister, a post he held until AKEL left the government coalition to run for the presidency with Christofias as its candidate in 2008.

Lillikas disagreed with the move and left the AKEL fold to support Papadopoulos, who lost the election to Christofias, a development which pushed Lillikas out of the political arena for two years.

Quizzed by Politis, Lillikas said he was interested in the prospect of running for the 2013 presidential elections, but said he had yet to make up his mind.

Lillikas had earlier been mooted as a Church-backed candidate, after the Archbishop said he would be drafting a list of presidential hopefuls.

But sources close to Lillikas all but ruled out this possibility, saying he would most likely be running as an independent candidate.

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.