The President of DISY, presidential candidate Averof Neophytou expressed certainty of election and urged voters not to listen to the pollsters because they always wanted the Democratic Rally to fall apart.
Neophytou was speaking on Saturday at an event organised in Choirokoitia by the local government directorate of the Democratic Rally. The event had a pre-election character and the executive secretary of the Union of Cyprus Communities Panagiotis Damianou was honoured.
The event was attended by the President of the Parliament Anita Demetriou, the Ministers of Interior Nikos Nouris, Health Michael Hadjipandela, Transport, Communications and Works Yannis Karousos and the Commissioner for the Development of Mountain Communities Costas Hambiaouris, MPs of the Democratic Union of Cyprus and community leaders.
In his greeting and addressing the community leaders, Neophytou said that he felt like one of them because he started serving in state offices from the position of Mayor of Polis Chrysochous.
He said that local self-government today is on the right track as a result of the latest reform.
No reform has taken place in this place that does not have the stamp of the Democratic Unionism.
No reform has taken place in this place that does not have the stamp of the Democratic Unionism. I want you to feel proud of our party. Our greatest success in talking about subsidiarity today is because the Democratic Union with Glafkos Clerides brought Cyprus into the European Union. To speak today about powers and resources is this evolutionary course as the culmination of the reform, he said.
Neophytou also spoke about the reform of the GESY, describing it as the greatest social conquest of the last decades. We will not allow anyone to demolish it (the achievement) but there are weaknesses which we observe and we have an obligation to correct the weaknesses, so that this reform is for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he said.
He mentioned at another point that a decade when DISY was not in government the country was led to economic bankruptcy.
With cuts in development budgets, with cuts in salaries and pensions in benefits, with cuts in local government funding and it took ten years of hard work to have development budgets, the biggest ever since the Republic of Cyprus was founded, he said.
He wondered whether we should jeopardise this path of growth and stability of the country especially now that the clouds are thickening of a new economic crisis not possibly much more difficult than the one we experienced in the period before 2013.
Neophytou said that we need experience, knowledge and determination and we need to be able to make decisions for the good of the country and not for our image.
Averof Neophytou knows first-hand what it means to be close to the citizen, says Karousos
Transport Minister John Karousos said in his address that Averof Neophytou started from local government and knows first-hand what it means to be close to the citizen, the importance of solving problems and listening.
Surely he knows and you know that the victory in the Presidential Elections starts through local government, through local government officials and I want to send you the message that we also recognize your value and your contribution and invite you to do everything possible to elect Averof Neophytou to the Presidency of the Republic, he said.
Source: CNA
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