The Diko Five leave with pride intact

By Charlie Charalambous

DIKO ministers, torn between their party and the government, were yesterday given the honourable way out by President Clerides.

The five ministers, who had pledged to stay on a few more days after submitting their resignations, suffered a crisis of conscience when their party boss Spyros Kyprianou asked them to withdraw immediately following Clerides’ decision last Thursday to run for a second presidential term.

Clerides had persuaded the five outgoing ministers – Andreas Moushouttas (Labour), Costas Eliades (Defence), Dinos Michaelides (Interior), Costas Petrides (Agriculture) and Kyriacos Christofi (Commerce) – to remain until the Council of Ministers completed its business at a meeting scheduled for tomorrow.

Having resigned but also having agreed to stay on, the ministers were less than enthusiastic with Kyprianou’s order to stand down before the business of government was wrapped up.

Faced with the no-win situation of either letting down the party or the government, Clerides yesterday offered a get-out clause to the harassed ministers.

He called the Diko five to the Presidential Palace and told them he accepted their resignation and there would be no need for them to attend the cabinet meeting.

Speaking on behalf of the five, a relieved Dinos Michaelides said afterwards: “We leave with dignity and pride.”

But Michaelides refrained from divulging whether Kyprianou had given them a stern ultimatum to quit.

“The decisions were taken, they were accepted, and any bitter feelings or other thoughts belong in the past,” Michaelides said.

The ministers will officially hand over their positions to the incoming appointees tomorrow morning. They will be sworn in on the same day.

Clerides has hinted that the new ministers will not necessarily come from his Disy party, although there are no apparent front-runners for a job with a four-month expiry date.

In view of the new arrangements the cabinet meeting previously scheduled for tomorrow has now been put back until Friday.

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.