AKEL General Secretary Stefanos Stefanou declared the party's result in the 24 May parliamentary elections a political and electoral success, using his opening address to the plenum of the Central Committee on Saturday to set out the party's priorities for the years ahead.
Stefanou said AKEL had achieved the target it set for itself at a Central Committee session in September 2025, raising its share of the vote from 22.3% in the 2021 parliamentary elections to 24%, adding approximately 9,000 votes while retaining its 15 seats in the House of Representatives. He described the result as a significant achievement given the widespread perception, cultivated across various quarters, that all parties are essentially the same. That sentiment, he argued, had weighed on AKEL along with a record number of parties and candidates contesting the election. He also pointed to exit poll findings showing increased support among younger voters and first-time parliamentary election voters, including a notable upward trend among those under 30, as particularly encouraging for a party approaching its centenary.
Cost of living, housing and the fight against corruption
Stefanou was clear that the electoral result would not breed complacency. "A large part of society is struggling, suffering and being worn down by the cost of living, high living costs, inadequate incomes, the housing crisis and energy poverty, and economic and social insecurity," he said. "Our party is called to continue its work on behalf of society." He committed AKEL to intensifying its parliamentary and grassroots initiatives on cost of living, labour and pension rights, housing, the taxation of wealth and what he described as banking arbitrariness, with a broad outreach campaign planned for September through November involving visits to residential areas, workplaces, clubs and open public gatherings.
On the question of corruption, Stefanou was pointed in his criticism of the Christodoulides government, accusing it of failing to restore the rule of law and continuing the patterns established under the Anastasiades-DISY administration. He cited the Videogate affair and what he called a deliberate lack of transparency around the President's wife's fund as evidence of this continuity. AKEL, he said, would maintain a policy of zero tolerance toward the far right and no cooperation with ELAM, which he described as a reserve force of the system and of the Christodoulides government, while seeking to broaden the anti-fascist front beyond the traditional left.
The Cyprus problem
With renewed diplomatic activity around the Cyprus problem under way, Stefanou said the party would stand firm and consistently behind its long-held position on a solution. He described AKEL as the force capable of resisting any attempts to dismantle the negotiating acquis or to introduce NATO involvement in the Cyprus problem. "AKEL is the force that has the weight, the knowledge and the will to push developments toward a solution that ends the Turkish occupation and reunites our country and our people, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots," he said. He added that the party's Cyprus Problem Sector within the Central Committee had already drawn up a plan for timely public information and mobilisation as developments unfold.
Looking to 2028
Stefanou closed by naming the 2028 presidential election as AKEL's strategic horizon. He said the election result had confirmed the party not only as the leading opposition force but as the central axis around which a broad progressive front could be built, one capable of producing a change of government. "AKEL and the Left are the backbone and the main pillar of the progressive world of this country," he said, "and bear a historic responsibility to do everything within their power to form the social majority that will bring progressive change to the governance of this country in the 2028 presidential elections. That is our strategic goal."
