PRESIDENT Papadopoulos must have been overjoyed yesterday as the Greek Cypriots heeded his call for a “resounding no” in the referendum. The means he used to achieve the result may have been unscrupulous, but there is no denying the fact that the people’s verdict was clearly and emphatically against the Annan plan and must be respected. It would be easy to attribute the result to government’s orchestrated misinformation campaign and the control it exercised over the electronic media, but its campaign would not have been so successful if the ground for it did not exist.
Opinion polls had shown right from the start that Greek Cypriots were not especially keen on supporting a solution based on the Annan plan in any form. The opposition may have subsided if the plan had been endorsed by the president, but that never looked a likely option. In the north, in stark contrast, the Turkish Cypriots were ready for a solution and completely ignored Rauf Denktash’s impassioned pleas for a rejection of the plan, voting resoundingly in favour of the plan. They will now be able to reap the benefits of this stance. Reports suggest that the EU, no later than tomorrow, will consider lifting the embargo against the north and opening up trade with it as well as offering financial aid. It will also have to recognise its port and airport, in order to facilitate this trade, which will not go through the Republic.
This might not be recognition of the ‘TRNC’, but it would signal the end of the north’s international isolation and there will be nothing the Cyprus government will be able to do to stop it. If the president is hoping to use Cyprus’ veto within the EU after May 1 to block any measures aimed at helping the Turkish Cypriots he should think again. His handling of the referendum has alienated the entire EU, including Greece, and he is likely to be given short shrift once we become a full member. The fact is, the Cyprus government has lost the moral high ground for good and will be unable to convince any of its EU partners about its point of view, no matter how strong its legal case might be.
It is looking increasingly obvious that the “resounding no” in the referendum will prove a Pyrrhic victory for Papadopoulos, as it will have many negative consequences for Cyprus. Having misled and snubbed the EU, the UN and the US, we should prepare ourselves for a period of diplomatic isolation. No country of significance, apart from possibly Russia, and certainly no EU member state, will be lending its support to Cyprus on the international stage.
Enlargement Commissioner and former friend of Cyprus, Gunter Verheugen, has already publicly described Papadopoulos as untrustworthy, a view that is most probably shared by the UN, which had first-hand experience of his political dishonesty. His cynical use of Russia to veto the UN Security Council resolution, aimed at providing safeguards on the implementation of a Cyprus solution last Wednesday must have underlined his bad faith to international community. The UN, with the help of the US and Britain, had pulled out all the stops in order to allay Greek Cypriots fears about the implementation of the Annan plan, and our government was busily plotting how to undermine them in order to ensure the rejection of a settlement. This was an extremely dangerous game, the high price of which we will probably have to pay in the not so distant future.
Does the president have a strategic plan for dealing with all the problems that his repeated shows of bad faith have created? In his last television appearance, he said he had no plans and he was being honest. How do you win back international support after calculating alienating the whole world? Who will listen to us when we protest about the Turkish occupation and division of the island when we were offered the opportunity to re-unite the island and instead of taking it we threw it back in the face of the international community.
During one of his most recent television interviews, the president assured us that there would be other opportunities for a settlement in the future, although he did not specify when this would be. Some of his closest associates had even claimed that once we join the EU we will be able to secure a more favourable settlement plan. Neither of these claims seems to be supported by the facts. Kofi Annan has made it very clear that there would be no other initiative, while the EU has endorsed the plan that we so overwhelmingly rejected yesterday.
Some analysts have been talking about a slim possibility of holding a second referendum on the plan before the end of the year, but how likely is this after the 76 per cent ‘no’ vote? And could the UN trust Papadopoulos to behave any differently the second time round? And why would the Turkish Cypriots agree to a second referendum now that their international isolation will be ended and their ‘state’ will be able to have normal relations with the outside world? The only person who has a right to celebrate tonight is Denktash, because the Greek Cypriots have handed him everything he has been fighting for, for more than 40 years, on a plate. His state enters the international arena, he keeps all the occupied territory and the Turkish army will stay in Cyprus indefinitely.
Meanwhile the Cyprus government will not even be able to secure a mild resolution condemning the Turkish occupation in an international forum. We fear that last night’s celebrations by the ‘no’ camp will turn sour very soon, and just pray that our emphatic ‘no’, proves reversible, as President Papadopoulos claimed it would. Because if it does not, yesterday’s ‘resounding no’ could prove to be a ‘yes’ to the formal partition of Cyprus.
