Edek will elect a new leader on June 1, following the surprise resignation of Marinos Sizopoulos, according to reports on Friday.

The Cyprus News Agency reported that the elections have already been scheduled, and that according to sources, a raft of leadership figures, including deputy leader Maria Vasiliadou and others including Andreas Sikkis, Elena Pericleous, and Andreas Apostolou also resigned from their positions at the top of the party.

The sources said the rationale behind the mass resignation was “to have a broader renewal of the party’s leadership”, while Sizopoulos and the others who have tendered their resignations are to remain in post until replacements are elected.

Edek members are set to have the opportunity to submit their candidacies to replace Sizopoulos during the first week of May, with all party members set to have the right to vote for a new leader.

Sizopoulos announced his resignation on Thursday night, saying he wanted to hand over the baton to “a new leadership”.

He insisted that he was “not quitting”, but instead “withdrawing” from the political frontline, out of respect for Edek’s internal party regulations, which restrict members to serving no more than two consecutive terms as an MP.

On Friday afternoon, he elaborated on his decision to leave the post, insisting again that his resignation was a matter of procedure rather than a decision to “quit”.

“As the leader of the party and the person responsible for upholding its internal regulations, especially when some provisions were my own proposals in the first place, I am obliged, upon completing ten years as the party’s leader, to hand over the party’s leadership,” he said.

He added that with new leadership, and “with the support of all the others, and with me being present and not absent from this difficult electoral contest, we are optimistic that Edek will be able once again to achieve its electoral goals”.

Asked whether he will remain as head of the party’s parliamentary caucus, which comprises three MPs, until the next parliamentary election next year, he said this will “depend on other procedures”.

“This will be determined by whether any of the current MPs holds a higher party office than mine,” he said,

Party sources told the media on Thursday night that Sizopoulos’ resignation came “like a bolt out of the blue”.

Sizopoulos was a dermatologist before entering politics and was elected as Edek’s secretary-general for the first time in 1995.

From there, he remained in and around the party’s leadership, before being elected as the party’s leader in 2015, replacing Yiannakis Omirou.

However, he has faced heavy criticism from inside the party in recent years, particularly after a disappointing performance in last year’s European parliament elections, which saw the party lose its only MEP seat and win just five per cent of the vote.

After the elections, former Strovolos mayor Savvas Iliofotou had penned an open letter calling on Sizopoulos to stand down.

“Edek urgently needs oxygen to survive, and you’re not the one to provide it,” Iliofotou wrote, although he added that Sizopoulos was not solely to blame for the party’s downward slide.