Former president Nicos Anastasiades, spoke out on Wednesday regarding the internal battle over who will carry Disy’s banner into the presidential race, but stressed he had no intention of intervening directly.

Speaking on CyBC, he said it pained him to watch Disy become consumed by ‘personal ambition’.

“It hurts me to see the party going through everything it is going through because of personal ambitions,” he said.

He assured that the party remained “a strong, stable political force” and called on those holding or seeking leadership positions to recognise that loyalty to the party, and by extension the country, should outweigh individual aspiration.

“Above their personal ambitions there is an ambition that must prevail, that of love for the party and by extension for the homeland,” he said.

He further insisted that Disy had proven its capacity to deliver “prosperity and development” and that preserving its strength should take precedence over any single candidacy.

Asked directly whether he planned to take an initiative to unite the party, Anastasiades said he had deliberately stayed out of the fray, despite being cast in various media reports as attempting to steer the outcome.

“Whenever I wanted to help or advise, I saw publications that I was trying to lead or guide, which is not my intention because of course I have no intention of becoming a politician again,” he said.

He pushed back firmly against suggestions that his continued engagement with party affairs served his own interests, saying it was unreasonable for someone who had devoted the greater part of his life to Disy to face accusations of acting against it.

“It is not possible for a man who has given more than half of his life to be accused by those who, due to petty ambitions, consider that he is at the expense of the party,” he said.

He added that personal aspirations, while legitimate, needed to be pursued only once the party had properly weighed its options and the wider political landscape.

His remarks followed a 30-page defence he issued yesterday against findings of the anti-corruption authority’s report into Mafia State, the book written by his former aide Makarios Drousiotis.

In that statement he argued the report’s officers “violated essential legal rules which govern any investigation” and had produced conclusions reached through “unforgivable negligence” rather than thorough study.

He said the serious accusations levelled against him remained “the product of malicious allegations, since they are not based on any testimony or have been refuted by the evidence,” and accused critics of abandoning the presumption of innocence in favour of trial by public opinion.

His comments on Disy came against a backdrop of open jostling within the party over who will be selected to run for the presidency in 2028.

Former party leader Averof Neophytou, House speaker Annita Demetriou and former health minister George Pamborides have emerged as the frontrunners for the nomination.

Pamborides has voiced his own personal objections to a constitutional change within Disy that shifted the choice of candidate from senior officials to the party membership.