Loading player
In Cyprus, a 24-year-old YouTuber with no political experience and a huge following online seems very close to winning a seat in the European elections. His name is Fidias Panayiotou, he ran two months ago and no one really knows what he would do if he were elected. The most recent polls give him enough votes to guarantee him a place in the European Parliament, where Cyprus has six seats.
Panayiotou is known as Phidias. On YouTube his channel has 2.6 million subscribers, more than double the total number of inhabitants of the island of Cyprus (also taking into account the inhabitants of northern Cyprus, the part of the country inhabited mainly by Turkish Cypriots and recognized as an autonomous state only from Turkey). Fidias, who also has profiles on Instagram and TikTok, has become famous since 2019, mainly through sharing bizarre and extravagant exploits: trying to hug Elon Musk, living a week at the airport for free, traveling across Japan without ever paying , standing for four days straight, not sleeping for five days, among others.
Fidias announced that he wanted to run as an independent candidate last January: «I’m 23 years old and I’ve never voted in my life: one evening I said to myself that if I never vote and never care, there will always be the same nerds in power , and so I said ‘enough!'” he said on that occasion. Three months later, in April, he formally presented his candidacy on a public occasion where he arrived accompanied by his father, a priest.
On that occasion he said that he ran as an independent because he did not want to “fit the mold” and to demonstrate that “he has no party interests to follow”. He added that his goal was not to be elected, but to motivate younger people to get involved in politics.
He continued to share videos of his exploits even after his candidacy: in the latest one, from a month ago, he boasts of having spent a lot of money in a very poor country. His electoral campaign was also characterized by bizarre actions and gestures: a few days ago, for example, he reported the theft of his car, alluding to a link between the alleged theft and his candidacy. In a video he filmed himself calling the police to report the theft, but in reality, according to the local press, there is no trace of him reporting it.
The most paradoxical aspect of his candidacy, even taking into account the following he has and the consensus he seems to have gathered, is that no one really has any idea what Fidias would like to do if he were elected. In an editorial published in the Cypriot newspaper Philenews, the journalist Frixos Dalitis wrote: «But what are your political positions? What exactly will he fight for in the European Parliament or which group will he join? Nobody knows and, apparently, nobody is interested.”
In several videos on Instagram Fidias presented himself wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the Next Generation EU, the so-called Recovery Fund, the large extraordinary economic aid fund approved after the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic: but beyond this gesture, and of some videos in which he complained about local politicians, Fidias never really explained what his positions are.
The latest poll, carried out at the end of May by the Cypriot agency RAI, showed that Fidias could obtain around 8.7 percent of the votes: this would be enough to obtain a seat in the European Parliament, he writes Politic.
According to the same survey, the most voted party will be Raduno Democratico, center-right and given around 27 percent, and the second most voted will be the Progressive Workers’ Party (AKEA), left-wing and given around 25. The polls also consistently say with forecasts for other European countries, that the far right could significantly increase its consensus, leveraging above all on migratory pressure, a very sensitive issue in Cyprus.
