Court case over Paphos gubernatorial election begins

The court case filed by Kostas Konstantinou against narrow defeat in the Paphos district gubernatorial election began at the town’s electoral court on Monday.

Konstantinou lost the election to Charalambos Pittokopitis by just 38 votes on June 9, but now believes he has evidence that the election’s result “should have been different” to what it was.

He told the court that “the prescribed procedures for a fair and impartial election process were not followed” and that he “strongly feels the injustice committed against him”.

Setting out his case, he said that at 2am on June 10, with 94.2 per cent of votes having been counted, he was “ahead by a narrow margin”, but that the flow of results then “stopped without any explanation”, before the official final result was announced shortly after 4am.

He said that in the ballot box from the village of Ayios Ioannis, Pittokopitis had won 13 votes and he had won none, with five ballots having been declared invalid.

This, he said, happened despite “accurate information I had that people had voted for me”, adding that “this development creates more than a suspicion of bad faith and malice in the evolution of the election result”.

In this regard, he said that between 2.06am and 3.57am, a total of 13 ballots were counted, and that therefore the result was “doubtful” given that it naturally would not take almost two hours to count 13 votes.

He went on to say that there had been “sabotage” and “unchecked arrivals” to the offices where counting was taking place, and said that for this reason, he was “certain” that “the prescribed procedures were not properly followed”.

Additionally, he said Pittokopitis had travelled in person to the place where the ballot boxes were being delivered alongside the district’s returning officer, and that the returning officer had confirmed Pittokopitis’ presence and told him he could go there himself if he wished.

This, he said, is “illegal”.

“Under no circumstances did Pittokopitis have the right to be there,” he said, adding that his presence “affects the reliability of the results”.

He went on to speak of instances during the evening of June 9 where a representative of Pittokopitis in Yeroskipou reportedly boasted of declaring invalid five votes which had in fact been valid, where votes had been lost and later found in an envelope in Prodromi, and where voters at the Koupateio primary school were only offered ballot papers for the European parliament elections, among others.

Konstantinou, a member of Disy, had served as an MP for 28 years across two stints, firstly between 1991 and 1996 and then between 1999 and 2021.

He was first elected in 1991 before failing to be re-elected in 1996, and then returned to parliament in 1999 when Averof Neophytou left parliament to become late President Glafcos Clerides’ transport minister, and then being elected in every subsequent parliamentary election until he stood down in 2021.

Pittokopitis, a member of Diko, served as an MP between 2016 and 2021, failing to be re-elected in 2021. He was endorsed by Akel and his own party in June, while Konstantinou was endorsed by Disy.