To some, the trial of Kafka in others, a play by Ionesco, was reminiscent of the trial that took place on Monday afternoon at the offices of DIKO, during which it was decided to behead 13 executives, including that of former Parliament Speaker and former DIKO President Marios Karoyan but and the president of GODIK Antigoni Papadopoulou.
The dismissal of the other executives will be completed today. The whole process is not going to go unanswered, with Mario Karoyan preparing the third statement on the whole issue.
How a purely political issue, involving different political positions, and perhaps disagreements over personal agenda issues, has found its way to justice is an open question. What is certain is that the whole process hurt the party even more and intensified the introversion in a period particularly vulnerable both for the position of DIKO on the party chessboard and for the future of Nikolas Papadopoulos.
The history
Two days before the elections, the chairman of the disciplinary council, Panikos Leonidou, sent a letter to 22 executives through court subsidies informing them of their obligation to attend the party's disciplinary council on Monday afternoon. The subject of discussion is the attitude they observed during the election campaign and the reasons they are accused by the leadership. All 22 dissidents responded legally by sending lawyers, with the DIKO leadership denying their legal representation.
The Limassol MP and chairman of the disciplinary council, Panikos Leonidou, had told "K" that for the first time in the history of a party, a trial is being held with full transparency, explaining that there will be complete objectivity in the process. It was preceded, of course, by a letter from the member of the disciplinary council, Stelios Ieronymidis, who is absent abroad, requesting a postponement and emphasizing that the disciplinary council should be more detailed in terms of the charges, otherwise the whole procedure risks becoming problematic or invalid. He even wondered why all the haste in the process.
"Procedural parody"
The 22 DIKO executives chose not to attend but to send lawyers to represent them, including Giannakis Ioannou. Asked to comment on the process to "K", he characterized it as a procedural parody aimed at the political extermination of historical executives of DIKO. As Mr. Ioannou explained, it was requested that the hearing process be covered with audiovisual material in order to have full transparency and to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
He also requested the participation of a stenographer, with the disciplinary board rejecting both requests. According to Mr. Ioannou, apart from the generalists, there was no substantiated complaint about the executives. He noted that the "accuser" in the whole process was Christiana Erotokritou. As Mr. Ioannou noted, the question arose as to whether the composition of the disciplinary council is valid as his term may have expired. After an hour and a half of the lawyers' presence, there was no end to the requests, with the 22 lawyers leaving the disciplinary body.
Political persecution and extermination
Indicative of the situation is the statement made by Antigoni Papadopoulou through the lawyer of Giannaki Ioannou to the disciplinary council, which refers to an attempt at political extermination, political persecution of executives.
"The indictment is general. It does not contain anything specific about which I am accused. The whole process is already illegal and clearly aims at the political persecution of traditional executives and the clearing of internal party accounts. I have repeatedly warned in the recent past that there has been a methodical gnawing at the Democratic Party of the party's sound hard core aimed at internal party domination, which has essentially weakened its internal cohesion.
Internal party games of power and methodical changes for which no responsibility was ever attributed, eroded the unity, the monolithicism and the complete identification in the Cyprus problem that has always been our boast. The day after the presidential elections, I expected the leadership of DI.KO to conduct extensive self-criticism to look for the real reasons for its failure. It is downstream looking for scapegoats and scapegoats. It must apologize for its wrong political choices and the lack of effective internal party dialogue and democracy within the party. "Let us also look at the reasons that led her in the last five years, in five electoral contests that led the party from defeat to defeat and from contraction to contraction," the letter reads. Papadopoulou.
Offensive to the world of DIKO
The spokesman of DIKO, Athos Antoniadis, described the decision of these executives not to attend as sad and offensive to the DIKO people.
"It is unfortunate that the former President of the party and other party officials, who violated the decision of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party, did not have the correctness and courage to appear and even try to justify their anti-party behavior and actions. "The highest insult to the people of the Democratic Party, whose principles are invoked by those who opposed him in the Democratic Party's election campaign, is the fact that they chose to be represented by lawyers," he said, clarifying that the process will continue as provided by the party's statute. .
The path of justice
The deletion process is expected to be completed on Tuesday. According to DIKO party sources, the removal of these executives was a logical development after the apparent undermining of the candidacy of Nikolas Papadopoulos. How the 22 dissidents will operate is still open, with the legal route being more likely to be deemed illegal and irregular.
As circles around them point out, they have never taken a position in favor of any candidate in their meetings that justifies their referral to a disciplinary body. At the same time, they are expected to put substitutive attitudes on the part of the leadership, both in terms of the submission of the candidacy of Nikolas Papadopoulos, and for the complete sidelining of the collective bodies regarding the collaborations with other political spaces and the adoption of the new strategy in the Cypriot . The war in DIKO, however, is not going to end soon, but the electoral conference that will take place between May and June will culminate with a climax.
Source: KATHIMERINI / Marina Economidou