‘Incomprehensible’ that agriculture minister remains in post, Stefanou says

It is “incomprehensible” that Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou remains in post, Akel leader Stefanos Stefanou said on Thursday, a day after Disy leader and House President Annita Demetriou joined his calls for her resignation.

He decried the “incomprehensible insistence of the president to keep the agriculture minister in her position, despite her blatant inability to adequately respond to the serious issues she was called upon to manage”.

“Whether it is the fires of last summer, the water issue, or now with the foot and mouth crisis, the minister proves to be inferior to her circumstances, and so assuming political responsibility is the only way out of the impasse,” he said.

On the matter of the ongoing outbreak of foot and mouth disease, he called on the government to provide “scientific documentation” with the aim of ensuring an exemption from European Union laws which stipulate that if an animal is found to have the disease, every animal in the livestock unit to which it belongs must be slaughtered.

Panayiotou had warned on Tuesday that not adhering to the EU laws on the matter could see Cyprus ejected from the European single market, and see tight restrictions placed on the movement of people, goods, and services between the island and Europe.

On Thursday, fellow Akel MP and House interior committee chairman Aristos Damianou also called for Panayiotou’s resignation, making reference to her handling of the wildfires which tore through the Limassol district and killed two people last summer.

He said that the joint session of the House interior, agriculture, and environment committees which was convened to examine the state’s response to the fires found “serious weaknesses and deficiencies”, as well as “significant contradictions between public statements made by ministers and officials from state services”.

To this end, he accused Panayiotou of “systematically avoiding answering the substance of the questions of committee members” and of “attempting to transfer the responsibility of coordination” to fire brigade chief Nikos Longinos.

He also said she had “refused to justify the absence during the important period” of her ministry’s permanent secretary Andreas Georgiou, who had been designated as the coordinator of the various involved organisations in response to the fire, but had travelled to Australia to commemorate the anniversaries of the 1974 coup d’état and invasion.

“Based on what was said before the committees, she generally did not adequately respond to her duties,” he said, before adding that she also “did not facilitate the work of the committees” during her appearances before them.

At the time, Disy MP Kyriakos Hadjiyiannis said that she and Gregoriou had both misled parliament in their testimonies.

Earlier, she had come under fierce criticism in the midst of the Limassol wildfire, for saying that “the only way we could have prevented the fire was for it not to have started” – a statement deemed insensitive by some.

The Akel members’ calls for Panayiotou’s resignation comes after House President Annita Demetriou had said she must resign over the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, accusing her of contradicting officials from other state services and bringing about confusion.

“In such serious cases, society expected a unified coordination of operations and communication, from the agriculture minister and all the competent services … When the management of a crisis leads to such chaos, taking responsibility is not a choice, it is an obligation. That means resignation. Because patience has its limits,” she said.

Late last month, Akel had said Panayiotou must “resign or be sacked”, once again citing the wildfire, the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and water shortages facing the island.

“On each occasion, the minister, and the government, not only did not take responsibility, she and they try to blame everyone else. Now, she is blaming farmers, the people who are currently losing their livelihoods and the hard work of a lifetime,” it said.

It added, “we wonder what else needs to happen for the minister and Mr Christodoulides to realise that she must be removed from her position”.

The government had on Wednesday night flatly rejected the demands for Panayiotou’s dismissal, accusing Demetriou off engaging in “a crescendo of populism with the obvious aim of hunting for votes in view of the parliamentary elections”.

Later that evening, President Nikos Christodoulides said he had “nothing to say” on the matter, adding, “I am not involved in this election campaign”.

It had been widely rumoured that she would be relieved of her duties during an autumn cabinet reshuffle, though when Christodoulides eventually did perform the reshuffle in December, she remained in post.

She remains the only cabinet minister who belongs to Edek, one of the three parties which supported Christodoulides’ 2023 election campaign alongside Diko and Dipa, with this fact irking party leader Nikos Anastasiou after December’s reshuffle.

He said at the time that he had hoped the party would be rewarded with a second ministry, saying “we had expected that the president … would see Edek in a better light”, but swiftly ruled out withdrawing from the government.