The long-awaited cabinet reshuffle, which had turned into something of a running joke in the last month, was finally announced on Tuesday evening by President Nikos Christodoulides. All the visits to the presidential palace by Diko chief Nicolas Papadopoulos and his entourage appear to have paid off as the new composition of the cabinet features a large number of former and current party members.

Even the one Diko man, who was reportedly destined for the chop – deputy minister of tourism Costas Koumis – was spared by the president. No serving Diko minister was axed while another two joined the cabinet – former municipal councillor Evanthia Tsolaki was appointed transport minister and Christos Senekis, a former deputy of the party, went to the agriculture ministry. Add to them, Neophytos Charalambides at health, Michalis Damianos at energy and Makis Keravnos at finance and we have half the members of the cabinet. There are another two ministers that were former Diko members.

The director of the president’s press office Viktoras Papadopoulos said the reshuffle preserved the “centre-right orientation of the government with social liberalism and clear European orientation,” as if these meaningless labels could hide the Diko domination of the cabinet. Is Christodoulides ashamed of the prospect of being viewed as a ‘Diko’ president? He did offer ministerial posts to Disy people, in order to show that he still has support in the party but there were no takers. His only appointment, with a tenuous link to Disy, was deputy minister of social welfare Tina Pavlou who stood for the party as an outsider in May’s parliamentary elections.

This effort to find a minister with Disy links and to keep Diko, which is the government’s main party backer now that Edek and Dipa have fallen by the wayside, may have been the reason the reshuffle took so long to materialise. Papadopoulos blamed the media for the continuous talk about a reshuffle, implying there had been no horse-trading and prevarication but this was not strictly true. The government had leaked names of possible appointees to gauge public sentiment, and it was no accident that individuals that featured in the speculation were eventually appointed or axed.

This should be the last reshuffle of the cabinet leading up to the presidential elections of 2028. It was a reshuffle with an eye on the elections, even though the president said on a television interview on Monday night that he had not yet decided whether to seek re-election. If the presidential elections were not a factor in his choices he would not have bent over backwards for Diko, acting as the president of a party government. At least it is of “centre-right orientation with social liberalism.”