THERE was text joke doing being sent on Saturday evening after Dr Matsakis’ arrest which went as follows: “What Christmas present did Tassos send Talat? Matsakis.” This perfectly illustrates the predicament the MEP finds himself in.
Shunned by his own party DIKO and publicly censured by the President after he ventured into the buffer zone and removed the Turkish flag from a guard-post, Matsakis is now seen as major liability for the government. He is no longer the maverick politician who occasionally amused us with his outrageous views and bizarre actions. There is not much tolerance for his self-publicising antics any more and it is unlikely that his arrest on new year’s eve would have earned him much public sympathy.
The Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat was not impressed with his ‘gift’ from President Papadopoulos either, realising that keeping Matsakis in a prison would be more trouble than he was worth. Had the ‘court’ in the north decided to keep him in custody until his trial on Thursday, the pseudo-state would have pitted itself against the European Parliament, which would have tried to secure the MEP’s release on the grounds that he enjoyed immunity. The Turkish military court, in which he appeared earlier yesterday on charges of entering a military zone, accepted his immunity and did not charge him.
In the end Matsakis put up the bail of £18,000 set by the court and returned to the free areas. He is unlikely to return to the north on Thursday for his ‘trial’ on charges of showing disrespect to the Turkish flag, but he will have paid a heavy fine for his foolish antics.
The MEP was punished for his arrogance and not for thinking that as an MEP he was untouchable. He knew that the authorities in the north had issued a warrant for his arrest after he had taken the flag, yet still thought he could cross over because he was accompanying a fellow-MEP. He attracted further attention to himself by demanding that the Turkish Cypriot policemen allowed him through without following standard procedure.
If he thought that the authorities in the north would be afraid to detain an MEP, he was wrong. Not only was he arrested and held in a police cell on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day but he was also made to appear in a pseudo-court and sign a pseudo-bond. But it will not be a pseudo-18 grand that that the pseudo-state will take on Thursday, if Matsakis fails to appear in the pseudo-court.
