Greens change name, widen scope to attract votes

By Evie Andreou

THE Green Party announced on Friday it will cooperate with civil society organisations and include on its ticket for the May parliamentary elections candidates who are unemployed and beneficiaries of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI).

The party also presented its new emblem and name, Green Party-Citizen’s Cooperation (Kinima Ikologon-Synergasia Politon).

Speaking at a press conference to mark the party’s 20th anniversary, leader and MP George Perdikis said that “a strong organisation must retain its ability to be reborn”.

He added that the Green Party-Citizen’s Cooperation know includes the Evnomia Borrowers Association, the Movement of Independent and Free Citizens, the Independent Citizens Movement Zygos, and other organisations.

“Together we form a citizens’ front which aims not only to be part of the parliamentary body, but to also stand against established policies that led the country to financial and societal hardships,” Perdikis said. “We believe it will be successful”.

He also spoke of “dirty games of the big parties” to keep the Greens out of parliament, but that his party was not deterred by the recent increase of the electoral measure, nor by the increase of the threshold of the popular vote a party should get to be eligible for the annual state grant.

He added that his party’s ticket will include candidates who are unemployed, beneficiaries of the GMI and “people with loans who face the imminent danger of foreclosures”.

The party’s ticket, Perdikis said, will represent society and not politicians and the parties.

They are everyday people, he said, who experience oppression and injustice. He added that they have “ideology, hope and determination”, and not flashy political names.

“We fight for the citizens because we are the citizens of this country,” Perdikis said.

He also said that the party, when it was founded in 1996, brought to the political fore environmental issues and gave a voice to those members of society that felt they were not represented by the then political system.

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.