Vote ‘yes’ to be rid of Papadopoulos

Sir,
I watched Tassos Papadopoulos cry on TV the other night. Not a pretty sight and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he had a couple over the limit. This is the man I voted for in a moment of unmanly weakness, insanely believing his pre-election promises that he would try solve the Cyprus problem in a practical and impartial way. And what do I get from him in return? “I did not get everything I asked for,” he said. The man must be a lawyer.

I shall not emulate our illustrious president and put the blame on everybody else. Yes, I hang my head in shame and I admit it: it is all my fault, because I actually voted for the guy. My only excuse is that I could not believe that, even in Cyprus, there would be a politician who would insist that the only permanent exclusion to the EU acquis, the one permanently limiting Turkish settlers to a maximum of 5 per cent ad infinitum, and which was one of the cornerstones of the Annan plans 1-3, be removed from the plan. This is the negotiator par excellence that we sent to negotiate on our behalf. But you must admire the gall of our leader, because one of the reasons he gave in his “speech to the Nation” as an excuse to trash the plan was the alteration of this clause. Only a brilliant political strategist or a mentally unstable personality could use this reason as an excuse to recommend rejection of the plan.

We are about the size of a Paris suburb, which just might be large enough to justify a Municipality and a Mayor. In our case, our own Mayor is called a President and gets to shake hands with real presidents and Prime Ministers at official functions and they even let him stand for official family photos. In consequence, the shock of so much glory is just too much for the average Cypriot politician, especially if he is 70 years old and has been waiting for “his turn” for over half a century. Now our Pap will not, cannot, let go. So he implies that if the answer is ‘no’ he will stay on, but if it is ‘yes’ he will resign, completely ignoring the fact that if we have a ‘yes’ result to the referendum, he will have to resign in any case!

So, for those of you who cannot trudge through hundreds of pages of the Annan plan and for whom political terminology might be difficult to follow, here is a simple shortcut criterion by which to make up your mind. Vote yes, and we are rid of Papadopoulos for ever.
Dimitris Mita,
Ayioi Omologites, Nicosia
Friday, April 09, 2004

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.