FOUR WEEKS ago, just after President Tassos Papadopoulos and Rauf Denktash had signed up to the New York agreement, we asked the following questions: “So who will sell the peace plan to the people, particularly to the Greek Cypriots, who are being bombarded with negative messages every day?” We had added: “Perhaps Annan has a strategy for selling his plan, because relying on Denktash and Papadopoulos to sell it would be a monumental miscalculation.”
Four weeks on, we have been given no indication as to how the UN plans to sell the settlement, although we have had considerable evidence supporting the view that neither of the two leaders is too keen to take on the role of solution salesman. Worse still, Greek Cypriot opposition to the plan has been growing steadily. A comparison of opinion polls conducted two weeks apart – published in Politis last Sunday – suggested that opposition to the Annan plan was on the way up. In the poll conducted on February 19-20, opposition to the plan was 40 per cent while two weeks later it was 53 per cent.
Another two polls published last Sunday also showed overwhelming opposition to the plan (62 and 54 per cent), while support was below 25 per cent in all of them. Another common finding was that about 70 per cent of respondents admitted not having much knowledge of the plan. Admittedly, a significant number of respondents had still not made up their minds. But these figures do not exactly justify optimism, because even if the undecided voted ‘yes’ they would not be able to tilt the balance, based on current voting intentions.
It must be obvious to everyone by now that there is a very negative climate, bordering on the hysterical among Greek Cypriots, which seems to be getting worse by the day. A host of factors have contributed to this climate. The most important is that the majority of politicians are publicly focusing on what are regarded as the negative points of the plan, labelling them as disastrous and promoting the questionable view that we would be able to secure a better deal once the Cyprus Republic has joined the EU. The small minority of politicians who have been focusing on the positive points have been treated as pariahs by their colleagues and the media, most of which have contributed to the so-called demonisation of the Annan plan.
Politicians who could support the plan like Nicos Anastassiades and Demetris Christofias, have (especially the latter) been sitting on the fence on the pretext that this would strengthen the president’s negotiating position. It has also been argued that Greek Cypriot opposition will persuade UN mediators to make changes to the plan that will make it more acceptable. This may be correct to an extent, but the fence-sitting has also given carte blanche to Papadopoulos to pursue his own agenda, with the public under the impression that he has the support of all the party leaders, even though this is not the case.
The truth is that the president has also contributed to the creation of the negative climate, both directly and indirectly. His regular public complaints about Rauf Denktash’s intransigence and efforts to deviate from the basis of the Annan plan serve no other purpose than to cause public anger. Then there are all his lieutenants who have been conducting an unrelentingly hostile campaign against the plan, in all probability with the president’s blessing. Is this also intended to strengthen Papadopoulos’ hand at the talks, or to ensure a ‘no-vote’ without the president needing to urge people to reject a settlement?
The impression given by the government’s actions and declarations over the past month is that its objective is to predispose people to reject the plan on April 20, without direct encouragement by the president. The government-inspired scare-mongering, initiated by the finance minister, about the economic consequences of a solution would seem to support this thesis. And if this is the case (there is an outside possibility that it is all intended to allow Papadopoulos to gain more advantages at the negotiating table), the plan is working very well indeed, as the opinion polls have shown.
In fact, the campaign to build opposition to the plan may have worked so well that even if Papadopoulos tells people to vote in favour of a settlement on April 20, as foreign diplomats seem to hope, it is unlikely to have any effect. The negative climate could have become so pervasive that it might be impossible to lift by the time of the referendum. In retrospect, the decision of the leaders of the two main parties to give their full backing to Papadopoulos and their refusal to speak out openly in favour of a settlement until after the completion of the negotiations could prove a very costly error of judgment.
By the time the fourth version of the Annan plan is presented to the people in early April, there might be such strong opposition towards it that nobody will be able to sell it to the Greek Cypriots, no matter how many improvements it contains. This is a possibility that nobody seems to have addressed.
