The results of the May 24 parliamentary elections may necessitate further elections if candidates like Fidias Panayiotou and mayors or community leaders managed to secure a seat in the new House.

Chief returning officer Menelaos Vasiliou explained that if Panayiotou was elected MP, he would either have to keep the new seat and give up his MEP status, or remain an MEP and the runner up in his party would take the House seat.

If he decided on keeping his MEP seat, he would have a fortnight to announce his decision and the House seat would be given to the runner up of his party and no further elections would be held.

However, if he decided on giving up his MEP seat to joint the House, then elections would have to be held for his European Parliament seat, as he ran as an independent candidate and therefore there was no runner up.

The same applies for some mayors or community leaders, who were elected to their post without being members of a political formation and also had no runner up.

In these scenarios, Vasiliou said, elections would have to be held.

Vasiliou explained that elections would have to be held within 60 days.

The interior ministry, he added, had requested an amendment to the legislation so that the seat would go to the next in line, which would save the state up to €6 million, however this was not moved forward due to reservations expressed by parliament, namely that decisions could not be taken in retrospect for elections already held.

After the amendment was dismissed, the election service requested at least 60 days to organised new elections instead of 45, which was passed by the plenum, on the premise that 45 days would mean holding elections in the middle of summer with everything this would entail given the high temperatures and the holiday season.

The 60-day timeframe could be extended to up to 120 days, placing the extra elections in the second fortnight of September.

Had the initial amendment been passed and Panayiotou elected to the House, the vacant MEP seat would have gone to Edek.

Regarding local administration officers running for parliament, Vasiliou said elections may have to be held locally.

If a president of a district self-government organisation (EOA) is elected to parliament, elections will be held in the district.

In the case of a mayor or deputy mayor, elections will be held in the municipality.

Vasiliou also said there was a remote possibility that elections would need to be held if a community leader or municipal or community councillor was elected if they had not been elected to their current post through a political formation for there to be a runner up.