By Martin Hellicar
VINE growers demanding greater state compensation for their dumped surplus grapes yesterday laid siege to the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, clashing with police in a bid to see President Glafcos Clerides.
The scuffles resulted in minor injuries to both protesters and police officers. Police arrested only one of the 200-or-so unruly demonstrators, who had come from the Paphos and Limassol districts. The arrested man was later charged with disturbing the peace and released.
After attacking the Presidential Palace, the angry protestors moved on to blockade the motorway junction outside the capital. Police again moved in to clear the grape growers, with more clashes ensuing before the road could be re-opened.
According to eyewitnesses, the demonstrating farmers attacked not only police but also innocent passers-by, both outside the Presidential Palace and at the motorway junction.
The placard-carrying protestors began gathering outside the gates of the Presidential Palace at around 11 am, to be faced by a strong police force. The grape growers, backed by union representatives and a handful of opposition party deputies, demanded they be allowed to hand a petition to the President in person.
The petition called for 100 per cent state compensation for the thousands of tonnes of unwanted white grapes currently being dumped in landfills. The government recently proposed to raise compensation from the current 90 per cent to 95 per cent, but growers are not satisfied with this improved offer. The petition also demanded further financial assistance to help vine growers overcome the effects of this summer’s heat waves.
Demonstrators protested that the compensation barely covered the cost of harvesting their unsellable crop.
“It pays only for the harvest day wages; who pays for the planting, the spraying, the pruning, the fertilisers? We will leave the villagers, we will abandon it all,” a woman demonstrator said.
“We cannot take it any more,” another said.
Tempers flared among the demonstrators when no reply to their request for an audience with the President was forthcoming.
They pushed into the police cordon blocking the entrance to the palace. Protest placards were hurled at the men in blue, who used their truncheons to try to beat the angry crowd back.
One of the demonstrators clambered over the perimeter fence and was wrestled to the ground by an officer. A group of demonstrators later tried to approach the palace via the public park to the north of the main entrance. The protestors turned back after coming face to face with riot squad (MMAD) officers in the woods around the palace.
The road past the Presidential Palace had to be closed off by police during the demonstration. According to eyewitnesses, some of the demonstrators attacked passers-by who tried to walk along the road past the palace during the demonstration.
Shortly after 1 pm, the demonstrators were informed that a team of representatives would be allowed in to see Clerides.
The news calmed tempers for a while, but failure to agree on how many people would see Clerides led to the meeting being cancelled.
The demonstrators insisted that around 20 people – representatives of village communities, deputies and union men – be allowed into the palace. The word from the President was that there were only 15 chairs in his audience room and that was the limit as far as visitors were concerned.
Akel deputy Christos Mavrokordatos – who was among the demonstrators’ representatives – described the President’s stipulations as an “unacceptable affront” to what he described as the “peaceful” demonstrators and the deputies supporting them.
“We departed in a show of protest,” Mavrokordatos said.
Soon afterwards, the demonstrators got back into their buses and drove to the junction on the Nicosia to Limassol highway just outside the capital. Once there they blockaded the roundabout and further clashes with police followed. The demonstrators finally gave up their protests at around 3 pm.
Somewhere between two-and-a-half and six thousand tonnes of grapes will end up underground this year.
Though heat waves have dented the grape harvest somewhat, growers are still getting a bumper crop while wineries are refusing to take in any more grapes.
Wine prices in the EU are so low that wineries say they cannot sell their produce.
Last year, over eleven thousand tonnes of grapes were thrown away.
The grape dumping is seen as a necessary evil in government circles but has been heavily criticised opposition parties.
