Democratic Rally has sharpened its attack on AKEL, accusing the party of using the political dispute over “Mafia State” to launch an early campaign for the 2028 presidential election.
In a strongly worded statement, DISY said AKEL’s stance showed “a conscious slide into toxicity, misinformation and division”, after AKEL accused the party of formally acting as a defender of former President Nicos Anastasiades.
DISY said AKEL was interested only in the next presidential race and was becoming “more ruthless by the day” in pursuit of that objective.
“The Democratic Rally respects the findings and procedures of the rule of law. It is asking for a full investigation and is not covering up anything,” the party said, adding that AKEL was judging others by its own standards.
The party also issued what it described as a clear message to citizens, saying it would not allow AKEL “to destabilise our state only so that it can climb back to power”.
AKEL had earlier accused DISY of abandoning any attempt to keep its distance from Anastasiades, after comments by the party’s deputy president, Efthymios Diplaros, who described the former president’s responses as convincing and referred to the findings against him as unsupported claims.
AKEL also criticised DISY vice-president Fotini Tsiridou for saying the party was outside the democratic spectrum because it was demanding accountability and the resignation of the Attorney-General and Deputy Attorney-General.
For AKEL, the issue is not a clash between parties or a personal dispute involving Anastasiades, but a broader test of the rule of law and public accountability. The party said the matter concerns what it described as a system of entanglement and cover-up built during the previous decade.
