DISY boss Nicos Anastassiades yesterday launched a full-scale retaliation on the government, denying charges that he possessed a document outlining the “political extermination” of the President.
Last Friday, weekly Pontiki published what it said was the full text of a confidential paper advising Anastassiades (or DISY) on how to discredit President Papadopoulos personally as a means of winning the next elections. The document, it alleged, was prepared by an aide to former Greek premier Simitis who was working for an Athens-based communications consultancy.
The paper’s spin was that this was a dark conspiracy to undermine and topple the Presidency.
Anastassiades was abroad when the report came out, so in his absence DISY’s defence was taken over by party officials. A sensation was caused when Christos Pourgourides said the document must have been intercepted by the secret service. The outspoken deputy went on to concede that surveillance by government agencies dated back to the Clerides administration.
Inevitably that put DISY on the defensive, for Pourgourides’ outburst sounded like an indirect admission of the existence of the document. The party then rushed to deny it had such a paper in its possession.
Yesterday, Anastassiades said that, after reading Pontiki’s piece, the document published in the paper bore no relation whatsoever to memos received periodically by DISY.
Dismissing the paper’s claims as “ludicrous,” the DISY leader said the document published was a fake. Anastassiades then turned the tables on the government, hinting that the Presidential Palace was behind a Machiavellian plot to undermine him. The implication was that the President’s entourage must have leaked the document to Pontiki.
Was the document – as published – authentic or not? If it was, then how did Pontiki get hold of it? A leak would be the most plausible explanation. But given that media reports are saying the document was actually locked away in Anastassiades’ office, it would appear unlikely the leak came from DISY.
If it was not genuine, as DISY contends, the opposition party still cannot prove its case unless it divulges the real thing. But that is unlikely to happen, for obvious reasons. In that sense, political analysts say that DISY is looking at a Catch 22 situation.
Still, seen in retrospect, a number of seemingly unrelated incidents over the past weeks might provide some clues. For instance, on a TV talk show a few weeks ago, AKEL deputy Nicos Katsourides told his DISY counterpart Averoff Neofytou that he was aware of DISY’s opposition strategy, and that AKEL possessed a salient document. Second, on his return from Australia, AKEL leader Demetris Christofias advised Anastassiades to stop fretting about the next presidential elections. And recently the Greens’ George Perdikis talked of “a plan to exterminate Tassos Papadopoulos”.
This has led some pundits to speculate that the government camp has held a document for a while now. This opens up a new possibility, namely, whether the paper was fabricated entirely or was adapted from an original.
