By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
…the most alarming thing is that even 48 hours after the results, the parties do not seem to have received the message. On the contrary, their first reaction was to try to blame (!) the voters themselves instead of doing some serious ‘introspection’ to realise… who’s actually to blame!
In Cyprus, and not only, the topic these days is none other than the success of 24-year-old youtuber and tik-toker Fidias Panayiotou, who not only managed to secure a seat in the European Parliament, but also literally swept the polls by receiving an astonishing 19.4%, leaving traditional parties with several years of operation and presence in the party system of Cyprus trailing behind.
Young Fidias received 71,330 votes in absolute numbers. In order to grasp the magnitude of this number, we should note that this is 1.5 times more votes than the No.1 in preference crosses – in this election – Member of the European Parliament, Loucas Fourlas (53,156) and 8,500 votes more than the elected Nicosia District Governor, Constantinos Yiorkadjis (63,710).
The 24-year-old received 30,000 more votes than ELAM (41,215), twice as many votes as DIKO (35,815), 4 times as many votes as EDEK (18,681), 7 times as many votes as Volt (10,777), 10 times more than DIPA (7,988), 15 times more than the Greens (4,742). AKEL received just 7,800 more votes (79,163) and DISY 20,000 more (91,316).
At the District level, Fidias Panayiotou came first in Paphos with 22.5% (8,994 votes), leaving DISY in second place by 4+ (!) points, receiving 18.3% (7,335 votes). Among the Turkish Cypriot voters, Fidias Panayiotou, apparently had no ‘approval’ at all, as he received only 1 vote (out of the 5,678 who voted).
But what does all this mean? What is the message? Broadly speaking, all this could be summarised as follows: A young man from the Meniko community wrapped the parties in a piece of paper, in a wrapper, ‘crumpled’ them up and threw them in the rubbish bin. And this happened because that is what the citizens wanted. That is what they saw in this 24-year-old, and they gave him the legitimacy to do it. And that’s what he did.
Because that’s what it’s all about. The citizens sent a very strong message to the parties. A message that in other cases was sent either through abstention (but this message never reached them because abstention simply did not/does not affect the parties – neither by losing seats nor by something substantial that could cost them), or later through ELAM, which due to its positions, excluded voters who wanted to send a message to the ‘political system’ but did not want to send it through ELAM. And now they sent it through Fidias. A kid, with no positions, no opinion, knowing almost nothing about politics but appearing sincere. ‘Guys, I don’t know anything about politics, but I want to learn. And give me your vote so that I can do that, because we are all fed up with politicians, they don’t do things the way we citizens want them to be done,’ the 24-year-old was saying during the election campaign. And the citizens found what they were looking for to send their message to the parties. They found a nonpartisan young man (so the voters didn’t feel guilty about leaving their party and voting for another party), an honest young man, a young man who spoke ‘their language’ and said what they themselves wanted to say to the Politicians and the Parties: That you, ladies and gentlemen, are politically bankrupt. You do not offer us solutions. You do not give us a way out. You are not interested in our problems, but you are there to take and not give.
Let us not forget that the same scenario, but in ‘political terms’, also played out in the recent 2023 Presidential elections. Where Nikos Christodoulides appeared ‘removed from the parties’, constantly stating that ‘I am going forward independently regardless of whether I am supported by parties or not’ and the citizens ultimately elected him as President of the Republic, without this being credited to either DIKO or any other party that supported him during the election.
In conclusion, the most alarming thing is that even 48 hours after the results, the parties do not seem to have received the message. On the contrary, their first reaction was to try to blame (!) the voters themselves instead of doing some serious ‘introspection’ to realise… who’s actually to blame!
Source: FIDIAS: THE YOUNG MAN WHO ‘CRUMPLED UP’ THE PARTIES AND THREW THEM IN THE RUBBISH BIN
