POLITICAL parties flew into a rage yesterday over a document circulated at a conference of European right-wing parties in Nicosia, and blamed ruling DISY for the insulting comments directed against them.
The document, a profile on Cyprus, which was circulated at the two-day session of the European People’s Party – European Democrats (EPP-ED) Group Bureau, directed several unflattering comments at island’s other political parties and at the Church.
Left-wing AKEL was portrayed as a “typical Stalinist communist party that resisted the lure of Euro communism until 1988”, while socialist KIKOS was described as a “fringe of intellectual radicals whose positions are quite extreme and often contradictory.”
Right-wing non-parliamentary party New Horizon was described as extremist and the Church portrayed as wealthy with “well paid and quite enterprising” clergy.
But ruling right-wing DISY, which is an associate member of the EPP, and centre-right DIKO escaped the criticism. DISY is said to stand for a market economy and represented the “middle and entrepreneurial classes”.
AKEL held a news conference yesterday to slam DISY over the document.
Party spokesman Nicos Katsourides said the information was “inaccurate, insulting and demeaning” and said the information could only have been passed on to the EPP by DISY.
“The largest responsibility belongs to the leadership of DISY, which it seems does not only pass on information on the Cyprus problem and Cyprus’ EU accession but also seems to be giving others kinds of information to foreigners,” Katsourides said. “If the left-wing European parties issued a document that made unacceptable remarks about DISY, the blame wouldn’t go anywhere else except to AKEL.”
KISOS and New Horizons also issued statements calling the content of the document insulting, but DISY spokesman Tassos Mitsopoulos said he did not know what all the fuss was about.
“First of all it’s not a document,” he said adding that it should be classed as a non-paper. “Beyond this, if we all want to enter into a state of collective masochism and underline the importance of a non-paper then I’m very sad because we have lost track of what’s important,” he said.
“Of course the easiest solution within the small party approach is to blame everything on DISY. I didn’t expect anything else.”
Mitsopoulos said the author of the ‘non-paper’ was a younger member of the EPP who had gleaned his information from the Internet, and that perhaps Cypriots should sometimes try to see themselves as others saw them.
“It is not realistically possible for foreigners to have the same opinion of us as we have of ourselves,” he said. “These reports are prepared wherever they have a conference. There is no political importance attached to it.”
Speaking after a meeting with President Glafcos Clerides yesterday EPP-ED Chairman Hans-Gert Pottering said the document was just a paper used for information. Asked by reporters where they information came from, he said it was from DISY officials. “It was just some information and not a document,” he said adding that many such papers were issued within the EU.
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.
