{"id":19050,"date":"2026-05-25T18:10:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/cypriot-social-media-star-fidias-will-keep-his-european-parliament-job-after-winning-cyprus-seat-ksat\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T18:10:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:10:43","slug":"cypriot-social-media-star-fidias-will-keep-his-european-parliament-job-after-winning-cyprus-seat-ksat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/cypriot-social-media-star-fidias-will-keep-his-european-parliament-job-after-winning-cyprus-seat-ksat\/","title":{"rendered":"Cypriot social media star Fidias will keep his European Parliament job after winning Cyprus seat &#8211; KSAT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Menelaos Hadjicostis<br \/>Associated Press<br \/>Published:\u00a0<time datetime=\"2026-05-25T12:05:22.000Z\">May 25, 2026 at 7:05 AM<\/time><br \/>Menelaos Hadjicostis<br \/>Associated Press<br \/>Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved<br \/>FILE &#8211; Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou holds his cell phone after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament in Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (AP Photo\/Petros Karadjias, File)<br \/><strong>NICOSIA<\/strong> \u2013 Cypriot YouTuber and TikToker <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/european-parliament-cyprus-spain-germany-greece-italy-2e508a3dd2bc3695f0ec48286f7aaaf2\">Fidias Panayiotou<\/a>, who translated his online popularity into a meteoric political career at home and in Europe, said Monday that he\u2019ll hold onto his European Parliament seat, despite winning one in Cyprus\u2019 House of Representatives.<br \/>\u201cI\u2019ll stay in the European Parliament because it would be good for the Direct Democracy party to have a European Parliament member,\u201d Fidias, who goes by his first name, told reporters before a proclamation ceremony. <br \/>Recommended Videos<br \/>\u201cWe could\u2019ve done better but we\u2019re happy with what has happened, this is a small victory.\u201d<br \/>Fidias whipped up much speculation by being coy about his political future throughout his campaign.<br \/>It was only six months ago that Fidias, 26, founded the Direct Democracy party. He said that the party was intended to upend the established political order in Cyprus and abroad by enabling ordinary citizens to have a say in formulating party policy and declare themselves party candidates through an online application.<br \/>Direct Democracy received 5.4% of total votes in Sunday\u2019s parliamentary election and four seats in the 56-member House. Fidias, who garnered the most votes out of all of his party\u2019s candidates, ceded his seat to runner-up Yiannis Laouris. <br \/>Even though it\u2019s a remarkable result for a group that eschewed the traditional way of wooing voters by outlining its policies, the result didn\u2019t live up to Fidias\u2019 own expectations. That\u2019s because nearly <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/election-panayiotou-social-media-spain-alvise-perez-b19afbc4e56d71143bb513de111fef1a\">one in five voters cast<\/a> their ballots for him in the June 2024 European Parliament election, even though he took no political positions, made no promises and didn&#8217;t present a program for his time in office.<br \/>\u201cIt seems now that people are hungry not for political positions, but for true people that are not lying, (but) saying the truth,\u201d he told The Associated Press in an interview shortly after the 2024 poll.<br \/>Fidias spent years boosting his popularity with outrageous video posts of him spending wads of cash in Vietnam, living a week in an airport for free, and burying himself alive for 10 days.<br \/>His online breakthrough came after he relentlessly pursued and succeeded in getting a hug from billionaire entrepreneur <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/musk-europe-politics-influencers-x-twitter-f11463f853af6e152e1972c90131e43d\">Elon Musk, who also became a fan<\/a>.<br \/>Fidias has acknowledged that his online antics had offered many Cypriot voters \u2014 who are deeply disenchanted with the perceived corruption of a party system that has operated on a favors-for-votes basis for decades \u2014 a way to express their frustrations.<br \/>Fidias has used online media as his primary tool to communicate with his supporters the inner workings of the European Parliament, the reasoning for his voting on issues as well as to answer his growing number of detractors who consider him and his trial-by-error decision-making politically infantile.<br \/>He has also courted plenty of controversy for his perceived support for negotiations with Russia over the war in Ukraine, and for casting doubt on what the International Criminal Court said was the \u201cunlawful deportation\u201d of Ukrainian children to Russia.<br \/>Sunday\u2019s parliamentary election saw the ultranationalist National Popular Front, or ELAM, party make major gains, receiving nearly 11% of the vote and eight seats \u2014 up from just under 7% and four seats in the previous poll.<br \/>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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In our commitment to covering our communities with innovation and excellence, we incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to enhance our news gathering, reporting, and presentation processes.<\/span> <a class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__LinkBase-sc-1fnzlkn-9 iBLULw\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ksat.com\/station\/2024\/04\/18\/how-we-are-using-ai-at-graham-media-group\/\" aria-label=\"Read our article\">Read our article<\/a> <span>to see how we are using Artificial Intelligence.<\/span><br \/>Copyright \u00a9 2026 KSAT.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMi1wFBVV95cUxQTWw4cXZKWG12MDlqS3ktYjM2UlZGVmVieTk5RnViWUNXNXB4dWRDSllXaU10ZXB1dW9hZUdVOW9MQTkzMFNObzI2dFA2QkRfc1RQS2F0WDM0NUV6XzVudVVQX1AyY0QzMXZzTlUzVW0tQllwZk1QbE54ZlFhNy0zMEhlWUpyU09oV013MDg1bTc0aVc2c3h4RmxvbTkxZ2FPOFJFQ2RLaVg2bFdOV0o3UXRDdlAzMFN5T2UtY1p4ZHdNMERVSU9rc19kOUZyR3YwOVFPNXhTQQ?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Menelaos HadjicostisAssociated PressPublished:\u00a0May 25, 2026 at 7:05 AMMenelaos HadjicostisAssociated PressCopyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reservedFILE &#8211; Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou holds his cell phone after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament in Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}