Konstantinos Christofidis officially announced his candidacy for the presidential elections, criticizing the "ruling parties" and the "worn political system" to which he attributed the crises and the successive scandals that hit the country.
"Now is the time after the unprecedented bankruptcy of 2013, the successive corruption scandals, the devaluation of institutions, the apparent incompetence of the ruling parties and after many years of occupying our country, to shout is no more," said the former rector of the University. at a New Wave event at the Pallas Cinema.
As he said, "we do not want our children disgusted to be forced to emigrate, we do not want to be ashamed to show our passport." "We can and deserve better, as long as many of us want it."
In his speech, Mr. Christofides said that he is here to speak the language of truth, as, as he said, "he is not a professional politician" and did not learn to flatter the crowd.
"What I will tell you was not written to me by a communication specialist", he said and continued: "I want to share with you what I have been thinking for years". He also noted that "a progressive candidate should not be the staged presence of political marketing, nor the presenter of a news bulletin written by others, nor of course the open voice of the party bureaucracy."
Mr. Christofides argued that in our country is not only the wall of occupation, but "there is another inner wall, built by the entire worn-out political system for 60 years."
"It is the wall that separates people from ours and others," he said, "those who have access to power and those who do not, those who own state, church and Turkish Cypriot property, and those who look away. "Their own fortunes in the north, to those who are appointed, who are recycled, I would always say to the councils of semi-governmental organizations and to those who will wait forever, even if they are qualified and more suitable," he said.
"Well, along with the wall of occupation," he continued, "we also want to tear down this wall that has been separating society for decades."
He also argued that "our state is based on unworthiness and customer mentality, the pillars of this culture are of course the behavior of the parties, their tendency to control everything distorts the functioning of the state, cultivates corruption and distorts and distorts independent institutions ».
"We have seen the results, the CSE scandal, the bankruptcy of Cyprus Airways and Cooperation, the fatal accident in Marie, the haircut of the 2013 deposits and the subjugation of the country to exhausting austerity," he said, adding, "the worst , the lessons did not become lessons ".
Among other things, he spoke about the "Lernaean Hydra of corruption, the excessive slowness in the administration of justice, the low ranking of our schools in international competitions" and added "we prove as an organized State an impressive incompetence of management".
"We have built a system that fails to plan with foresight, finds it difficult to implement what it plans, costs a lot, constantly generates lost opportunities, recycles low expectations and ultimately provokes public apathy," he said, adding that "the root of the problem is the reluctance of the political system to bring about radical change ".
Mr. Christofides did not mention in detail his program, saying that it will be presented in the next thematic period and will be published in an e-book. However, he described it as "visionary and achievable".
Among other things, he referred to the need to establish full-time schools, experimental schools in all cities, while he stated that Israel and Denmark have models for the transformation of the Cypriot economy, small but extremely creative countries, as he said.
According to Mr. Christofides, Cyprus remains a prisoner of an anachronistic and unsustainable economic model and is in danger of becoming a tail of developments.
He referred to the workers, saying that "the unimaginably worn-out political system convinced them that in order to have a job we would have to build apartment buildings selling passports, but securing their work and income in the long run would not come from temporary predators but from the systematic rebuilding the economy ”through sustainable development.
In relation to the Cyprus issue, saying that Cyprus needs allies with its most natural ally, the country's European partners, he supported the United States of Europe with a common border, a common foreign policy economy and a common defense.
"A solution to the Cyprus problem, the abolition of Turkish guarantees and NATO membership would be a positive prospect," he said.
He referred to questions asked by journalists if he has the experience to govern the country. "My answer is this, the experience of our politicians, which led to the division of our country, which caused three economic disasters and turned the country into a global laundry of corruption, I really do not have this experience," he said. But I have the clear eye of the man who did not get involved in the politics of the transaction, I also have the measurable work of the man who ran the country's most prestigious intellectual institution, the University of Cyprus and in the midst of financial crisis I successfully managed about € 1,5 billion. "Remember, when the country was on its knees, the University was recording its big leaps."
He also said that in these elections I am the only refugee candidate and "the first in the history of the Republic of Cyprus to come from the other side of the Pentadactylus". "I have the privilege and the obligation to speak for all the uprooted people because I feel for them, to become the voice of the refugees, of all those whom the corrupt political system remembers only on the eve of the elections," he said.
Finally, he referred to many who expressed the legitimate doubts, as he said, when he expressed his intention to submit a candidacy, calling it an "unequal battle".
"Friends, unequal battle is the one that is not given. I take my risks, I invite you to take yours too ", said Mr. Christofidis and concluded:" We can become thousands of drops that will become a wave, that will become a tsunami. If we do not dare now, when? If we do not change the country, who will change it for us? I ask you to compare characters, philosophies, plans and programs. To decide not with the party criterion, nor the narrow personal interest that our homeland will become better ".
Nobel Prize winner Christoforos Pissaridis, a founding member of the New Wave and a professor at the London School of Economics, also spoke at the event.
"Cyprus is at a crossroads, the easy way is to choose the same party system that has ruled us for decades, the difficult but also the most creative for the country, as we deserve, is to choose another Cyprus."