ONE OF President Papadopoulos’ most oft-repeated assertions is that the Annan plan cannot be put to referendum again “as is”. Often the president, his DIKO minions and the neo-rejectionists of AKEL (Andros Kyprianou for instance) challenge those who disagree with their policies to “tell people clearly whether they accept the plan as is”.
It is disappointing that the opposition not only avoids responding to this challenge, but, with its half-hearted stance, gives the impression that it is ashamed to defend the correct position it had taken in the referendum. I will therefore try and give an answer to the president.
For someone to talk today about the Annan plan “as is”, is sheer stupidity. That plan is dead; killed off by Papadopoulos and Christofias. It is totally absurd for them to ask others to say whether they accept a plan that loner exists, because they killed it.
We will never again see plan, “as it was” on April 24 (and not “as is”). Those who had it buried know this. And even if it were possible to resurrect it, whether we accepted it or not would be completely irrelevant. From now on, the Turkish Cypriots will not accept it and nobody would table it again “as is”. Some of its most important provisions can no longer be implemented, because they have been overtaken by events and, with the daily cementing of partition, have been turned into a pipe dream.
When the Annan plan was presented, it stipulated that the implementation of all its provisions relating to property would be based on the state of affairs on November 11, 2002. All its versions, since then, forbade the transfer or exploitation of property (Part II articles 5 and 7). Now that we have killed off the plan, the hopes of any Greek Cypriot property that is sold or developed in the north being returned to its owners have been destroyed for good. Three weeks ago, I drove along the route from Vassilia to Ayios Epiktitos. To say there was a construction boom would be an understatement.
“As you gave us your properties, we decided to develop them,” said the Turkish Cypriot architect I was with.
In addition to this, many properties are now being sold to Israeli developers. So how will the Annan plan be implemented “as is”? All the plots which have been sold or on which new buildings have been constructed, after November 2002, and all the ones that will be developed by the time the next settlement plan arrives, will remain in the hands of their new owners. Meanwhile, over the next few years, the Turkish Cypriots will have sold most of their properties in the south. The way things are developing we will not even be able to have an exchange of properties, as Rauf Denktash had wanted.
This is the amazing achievement of our apprentice political wizards, Papadopoulos and Christofias, who cemented partition with their resounding ‘no’. Needless to say, this nightmare situation will not change no matter how many times a panic-stricken Christofias calls the British High Commissioner to protest about it. They should at least stop showing contempt for the intelligence of refugees, whom they pushed into voting ‘no’ and thus losing their properties. Now they cannot exchange them with Turkish Cypriot properties in the south nor will they be compensated for the property that is not returned to them.
The Annan plan “as is” now exists only in the imagination of President Papadopoulos. The next plan, “as it will be”, and when it eventually comes, will be significantly worse, as we ‘yes’ supporters had been warning since before the referendum. Those responsible for the situation should therefore put an end to their idiotic word-games about the plan “as is”. The AKEL leadership, in particular, should, at long last, consider its frightening culpability for the cementing of the island’s partition.
