After a ten-year presidency that has seen scandal after scandal, and the widening of the economic gap between the rich and the majority of workers, there is still no viable candidate

As DiEM25 in Cyprus, we express our disappointment and dissatisfaction regarding the candidates for the upcoming presidential elections of the Republic of Cyprus.

We are disappointed as the current candidates propagate ideological disarray and divert the progressives, already divided, towards mediocre and meaningless candidates and drive the youth to abstention. We are disappointed as no truly progressive candidate has managed to emerge out of the consultation and cooperation of the forces of the Left, the environmental movements and the wider world, through democratic and open processes.

There is no candidate elected from the bottom up, from the grassroots, expressing collective decisions with the objective of having a government that represents the people which is not delegated by a closed nomenklatura, or personal rulings.

Beyond the selection-election process, the candidacy that would express and represent our movement would be politicised in the interests of the many and the protection of the environment, as a voice of the working class, the precariat and under-represented social groups, through a policy to break away from the Cyprus Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEB), the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KEBE) and the rest of the Oligarchy.

The programme of governance would include proposals to democratise the economy, the institutions, and the centres of power. A political programme that would aim at social public investment; a higher Minimum National Wage (with COLA for all); housing and unconditional basic income for all; investment in, and strengthening of, public health and education; protection of the natural environment and public spaces in general; support and promotion of culture and arts; a non-militarised federal reunification (with political equality) that will induct Cyprus into a New Non-Aligned Movement and leave all fossil fuels deep in the earth, with an immediate (just) green transition to an ecologically sound Europe.

There is no radical candidacy after a ten-year Democratic Rally party (DISY) frenzy of overt conflict of powers, which widened the economic gap between the rich and the majority of workers, tore Cyprus apart with corruption scandals, sold off the co-operative sector and privatised the main commercial port of Cyprus.

We see a united right, which has turned schools into conservative examination centres; poisons society over the immigration issue (with far-right ELAM as a leader); incarcerates refugees in miserable conditions, impoverishes the people and holds energy policies which are leading Cyprus towards an ultimate catastrophic partition.

DiEM25 in Cyprus, as an active political movement, takes a stand and calls on the Cypriot people to vote against the candidates of DISY (the ruling party) and the candidates of the far-right. The interests of the many, the existing democracy, the prospect of peaceful coexistence of communities, class solidarity, and the protection of the environment are further endangered by the pernicious neoliberal, “radical centre” and conservative choices.  As a movement, we will intensify our political action to increase our influence on the political regime (inside and outside the decision centres), to fill the ideological void that exists in Cyprus today and to break away from the oligarchy through a democratic revolution as the only alternative.

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