THE AKEL leadership has recently been going out of its way to drive us all crazy. First, in order to avoid the risk of a clash with President Papadopoulos – and therefore its possible exclusion from power – it took that absurd position in favour of a ‘no’ to the Annan plan on the ludicrous grounds that this was the best way to ‘cement’ the ‘yes’ in a new referendum.
This was the most outrageous decision ever taken by the AKEL leadership in its 80-year history. Certain long-time members and officials of AKEL are perfectly justified in claiming that this was a betrayal of the party’s history and beliefs. And now party chief Demetris Christofias, in all seriousness, has told us that it was time to decide what we wanted in terms of a settlement.
“We must decide, first, what we want and then increase our efforts for a solution because the pressure and pleas for a Cyprus settlement will not fade away, but, on the contrary, will intensify especially from within the European Union,” he said.
Can you believe it? After 30 years of negotiations, after hundreds of meetings and unanimous decisions by our political parties in the National Council, after months of talks on the Annan plan, which was put before the people, the AKEL leader has observed that first we must establish what we actually want. In other words, for 30 years now our leadership did not really know what it wanted. It has been taking everyone for a ride – the Greek Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots, the UN and all the foreign governments that had been helping efforts to find a settlement – as it had not decided, according to Christofias, what it actually wanted.
In truth, the reason that there was no solution this time either had nothing to do with the fact that we do not know what we want. On the contrary, it is because we all know exactly what we want. Unfortunately, we do not all want the same thing. We, the traitors of the ‘yes’ camp, voted in favour of a settlement because we wanted to rid Cyprus of the Turkish occupation army, we wanted refugees to return to their properties and those who did not to be compensated, and we wanted our country re-unified because the alternative was partition. Papadopoulos and Christofias urged a large number of people to vote in favour of the continued presence of the Turkish army, partition, and the surrendering of Morphou and Famagusta to Turkey. This is the truth, which no amount of political spinning or ludicrous analysis can hide.
But the responsibility does not belong to Papadopoulos. We all knew who the man was. He never tried to hide his true self. This was why this column had repeatedly warned before the last presidential elections that AKEL’s choice of candidate would prove a disaster. The blame for the current situation, the blame for the fact that the whole world has been vilifying the Cyprus government while the pseudo-state is gradually being transformed into a real state and its leader is being accepted by the US, the UN and Europe and the impending partition lies squarely with the AKEL leadership which imposed on us, as president of the state, a peripheral politician who did not even command the entire 12 per cent electoral strength of the party he led.
Christofias should leave aside the disingenuous tricks, supposedly remembering after 30 years that it is time for us to decide what we want. And he should never again dare to pose the idiotic question “what harm has Cyprus ever been caused by AKEL?” as he will receive the answer he deserves. The party brought upon us two disasters — first Spyros Kyprianou and then Tassos Papadopoulos. What greater harm could it have caused Cyprus that this?
