The focus is shifting to the top where a heated debate is expected for the ticket leading to the second round on February 12.
DISY[/B] is focusing its sights on Nikos Christodoulides in order to rally voters around the candidacy of the party's president, Averof Neophytou. This will only be done by limiting the losses to the former foreign minister, who seems to be gaining a significant portion of the voters. Averof Neophytou's staff appears optimistic that the outflows will be limited in the coming period through systematic work. At the same time, the staff of Averof Neophytou will attack Andreas Mavroyiannis, referring to the actions of the Christofias-AKEL government.
The staff of Andreas Mavroyiannis speak of clear improvement at all levels and refer to the latest opinion polls that show the candidate recording a clear improvement, both in voting intention and qualitative characteristics. AKEL's rallying leaves the party leadership satisfied but at the same time they realise that the pool of AKEL votes is not unlimited, hence the effort will be focused on the space beyond AKEL. The effort to limit the losses to Nikos Christodoulides is also aimed in this direction.
With opinion polls showing Nikos Christodoulides as the favourite for the second round, his staff estimates that the attacks against him, both from Averof Neophytou and Andreas Mavroyiannis, who are expected to fight until the last moment to qualify for the second round, will intensify in the coming period. In the staff of Christodoulides and the forces supporting him, organizational efforts continue in every corner of Cyprus, with personal contacts of the candidate himself, but also of DIKO and EDEK officials. Maintaining the poll lead in the vote intention allows Nicos Christodoulides to limit leakages and attract voters influenced by the victory performance.
Television one-on-one
With many open issues on the political agenda, the three main contenders for the presidency will face off tonight December 1 in the second major debate on private TV stations, which will start at 9:15 pm, at the end of the newscasts. The debate will once again be hosted at Omega's studios, moderated by Alpha journalist Emilia Kenevezou.
Apart from the election news, the topics to be discussed will include Corruption, Institutions, the Cyprus deadlock, Economy and Precision, as well as internal governance issues such as Education, Health, Environment and others. The structure of the debate will be the same as the previous one, i.e. in the first part each journalist will ask a question to each candidate, who will have a minute and a half to answer. In the second part, each journalist will ask all three candidates the same question, while in the third part, again one question will be put to each candidate. Then the three candidates will each have two minutes for closing comments.
CyprusTimes will again cover the great debate with a continuous stream of question-and-answer sessions, followed by an analysis with the second reading of the telecombat between the main contenders for the presidency.
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