Volt Cyprus co-president Andromachi Sofokleous said on Friday that her party is calling for an independent investigative committee to examine the Sandy case, while making clear that Volt has not adopted and does not endorse the allegations published by journalist Makarios Drousiotis, who is a Volt candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Speaking on Politis Radio 107.6, Sofokleous was asked whether the Drousiotis affair was pulling Volt into a damaging downward spiral or causing the party to turn inward. She rejected the premise, saying there was no question of introversion, precisely because the allegations are the product of Drousiotis's own investigation. "We never considered or claimed that we could play detective, or adopt an investigation that we did not ourselves carry out," she said.
On Volt's institutional position, Sofokleous was clear that the party's stance would have been the same regardless of whether Drousiotis was their candidate. "From the very first moment, we had an institutional position which, I believe, is one we would have taken even if Makarios Drousiotis were not our candidate," she said. The party is calling for an independent investigative committee, she explained, because the case appears to be, or could potentially prove to be, of exceptional gravity. "Unfortunately, there is a problem with the credibility of institutions at this moment. We cannot play games with this issue," she added.
Pressed on whether the credibility of the allegations themselves is also at stake, Sofokleous turned the question around, asking how the credibility of the disclosures or of any of the claims could possibly be assessed without an independent investigation. She said Volt expects the state and the police to handle the matter with the seriousness the moment demands, but added that she did not believe anyone could honestly say that the way the police have handled the case so far conveys transparency, or that it covers all the potential dimensions of the affair.
Asked directly whether Volt endorses Drousiotis's claims and whether the party stands behind him as a candidate, Sofokleous was unequivocal. "As a party, we have never adopted any of the claims," she said. Having Drousiotis on the party's ballot, she explained, means having a person who has been a source of disclosures that are today taken as given. "He is a person with the capacity of an investigative journalist and that is his work. We cannot know his investigation, nor adopt his investigation at this stage, but he belongs to Volt and he is a member of it," she said.