Inia villagers hand in voting books

RESIDENTS of the remote Akamas area village of Inia yesterday turned in their electoral registration booklets in protest at plans to declare the area a national park.

All but five of the 300 registered voters in the village have handed over their booklets to mukhtar Sofoclis Pittokopitis who yesterday went down to Paphos town and handed them over to Paphos District officer Nicos Roussos.

But Roussos warned the villagers they were breaking the law and said he would be handing the 295 booklets to police so they could return them to the village.

The protestors – who want to be allowed to develop their land for tourism – risk fines or imprisonment if they fail to cast ballots in the February 8 presidential elections as voting is compulsory in Cyprus.

Pittokopitis said a village meeting would be called to discuss their next move. He repeated that Inia residents wanted to register their protest at the government’s handling of the national park issue.

Environmentalists have long campaigned for the remote peninsula – whose beaches are nesting sites for endangered loggerhead and green turtles – to be protected from mass tourist development.

Greens have backed a government-commissioned World Bank report proposing the area be declared a national park with development limited to within existing village boundaries.

The report is still being considered by the government, but local residents have openly opposed it.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.