EDEK, DIPA and Ecologists face life outside parliament

Politics ecologistsedekparliamentreshuffleTop News EDEK, DIPA and Ecologists face life outside parliament How Cyprus's New Parliament Will Carve Up Its Committee Chairs Relevant News Swimmer in panic grabs wife, both saved off Limassol 17 August 2026 EDEK, DIPA and Ecologists face life outside parliament 17 August 2026 34 degree peak and isolated showers 17 August 2026 Frixos Dalitis 17 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber What comes next for the parties backing the government? What political future awaits EDEK, DIPA and the Movement of Ecologists – Citizens’ Cooperation? Is there any prospect of the parties of the Centre working together? And do the newer formations, ALMA and Direct Democracy Cyprus, have a political future at all? The parliamentary election result created a new set of conditions on a political landscape that keeps shifting, with fluidity the only constant. The post-election wounds EDEK, the Ecologists and DIPA all lost their seats in the House of Representatives. Two other formations took their place: ALMA and Direct Democracy Cyprus. DIKO’s share fell, while ELAM doubled its own. This equation is still playing out for all of these parties. EDEK, the oldest of them, is now facing the peak of a prolonged crisis it has been living with for several years. Had it managed to hold on to a parliamentary presence, the problems might well have been swept under the carpet once again. Former party president Nikos Anastasiou said in a recent interview that EDEK had been fought from within, because some wanted it out of the House. That view was certainly circulating among certain people. The thinking was that this would create the conditions for the party to regroup and be reborn. Whether that was right or wrong will become clear in time. What is certain is that EDEK stands at a pivotal moment in its history, outside the House for the first time. Can the party’s next president unite it and lead it, intact, to a constitutional and electoral congress? Can they agree on the formula to follow? These questions are hanging in the air, and if the party does not turn the page, what follows looks unclear and difficult. The picture is difficult for the Ecologists too. The party has already moved to tighten its finances so it can cope without the state grant. The movement never really managed to grow and renew itself over the course of its history, but through its various campaigns it did keep winning parliamentary representation. That presence is now gone, and its political work is confined to the extra-parliamentary level, with everything that implies. DIPA faces a difficult post-election picture of its own. Resignations were tabled at the first meeting called to assess the result and were not accepted, but the reality is that the party is operating under conditions of uncertainty. There are disagreements, some of them sharp, over policy. Marinos Kleanthous has come out strongly against the government on several occasions and has apportioned blame to Nikos Christodoulides for the election result. Having two DIPA ministers in the Council of Ministers is undoubtedly a strength for the party, but losing its seats in the House is just as clearly a burden. The prospect of a united Centre Nikolas Papadopoulos announced in an interview after the elections that he was sounding out the ground for a merger or cooperation between the parties of the Centre. That prospect remains open, though a merger is not on the horizon at this stage. A fresh meeting between the DIKO president and the DIPA president is expected from September, continuing the discussion and exploring cooperation on policy. Both parties are in the governing camp in any case, though that has not removed the element of competition between them. In EDEK’s case, with the situation fluid and effectively no leadership in place, dialogue is difficult. In neither case are the conditions easy. Relations with the government The latest cabinet reshuffle caused grumbling in both EDEK and DIPA. EDEK no longer has a representative in the Council of Ministers. DIPA is complaining that it was neither informed nor consulted. In both cases there are voices of mistrust and dissatisfaction directed at the government. Some are putting other options on the table, with glances to the left. For now the picture is unclear, since neither party has recovered from the shock of the ballot box. Every scenario remains possible, both for their relationship with the government and for the course they take into the 2028 presidential elections, which come before any other electoral contest. Two further elements feed into this part of the equation. DIKO, broadly speaking, should be satisfied with the outcome of the reshuffle. For some, though, a walkout before the presidential elections cannot be ruled out, even if that means party figures who hold appointments stay on in government. AKEL’s opening Stefanos Stefanou and other AKEL figures have said publicly that the party is opening a dialogue with forces of the Centre that fell out of the House, among them EDEK, DIPA and the Ecologists, as part of the effort to build a progressive social alliance. What is understood is that this dialogue will not necessarily involve the leaderships. It may instead reach out to officials and members of those parties, with a view to a political partnership at the presidential elections. That scenario cannot be excluded, and it therefore creates a factor for the presidential race, large or small, which carries weight for the shaping of the wider political landscape. ALMA and Direct Democracy Cyprus Two parties arrived on the political scene with a specific audience. Odysseas Michaelides’s ALMA started out with a prospect and a momentum that were lost along the way. Direct Democracy Cyprus was the attempt to give institutional political form to the reaction recorded at the 2024 European elections, in the vote for Fidias Panayiotou. Panayiotou, through his own actions, managed to demystify himself as a politician and, with it, his attempt to put a political proposition to the public through Direct Democracy Cyprus and the much discussed Agora app. For different reasons, these are two parties whose political future is uncertain. Their time in the House is far too short to judge. Both, of course, have issues of cohesion and internal disagreement that are already visible, though how sharply these surface remains to be seen. They are certainly two formations that did not make a dynamic entrance into the political scene, and that alone has weakened whatever role they might have played. Their first political acts prompted discussion and doubts. Direct Democracy Cyprus backed and elected Annita Demetriou to the presidency of the House, while ALMA backed Stefanos Stefanou, in a partnership announced to AKEL’s central committee by the party’s general secretary. Two parties wearing the anti-establishment cloak, moving within the logic of the establishment. Even so, they are two parties with something in common, and between them they took a share of the vote that carries weight. So how they move and where they go from here matters. 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