THE ANGRY reaction generated by President Christofias’ remark which apparently equated the 1974 Greek Junta-orchestrated coup with the Turkish invasion was out of all proportion. It certainly did not warrant the political mass hysteria that we witnessed in the last few days, with outraged newspapers, television and radio shows treating a few badly-chosen words as an issue of colossal significance.
What had Christofias said at the Brookings Institution in Washington to spark the breast-beating? The offending comment, according to the transcript of the speech issued by the Institution was the following: “And, of course, the involvement at the end of the day of the three guarantor powers which all played a negative role unfortunately towards the developments in Cyprus, the two so-called main lands, in fact, invaded both.” This is such a clumsily structured sentence the only thing it should have provoked was mild amusement.
The real issue should never have been this remark, which everyone would have forgotten two minutes later, but the poor standard of the president’s English. Going through the transcript is a harrowing experience, when we consider that this speech was made at a prestigious organisation and was attended by academics, diplomats, congressmen and senators. The president must have made a very poor impression on his audience with a speech that was barely comprehensible and featured grammatical errors in almost every sentence.
Nobody expects Christofias to have a supreme command of the English language. His mother tongue is Greek and he also has a good command of Russian. He could have made his speech in Greek and avoided embarrassing himself and the country he represents in front of a distinguished audience. If he felt he should have used English he should have spoken from a prepared text written by someone with a good command of the language.
But making a 40-minute, off-the-cuff speech in a language he is obviously not comfortable speaking was not the smartest thing he has ever done. Did it not occur to him that he would not be able to put his points across clearly and that he would confuse rather than enlighten his audience? In a way, he showed low regard for his audience by insisting on improvising his speech in English in which he is incapable of expressing himself lucidly.
Was he embarrassed to use a prepared text or did he have nobody in his entourage to write a speech in English for him? We hope next time he speaks to an international audience he will show less confidence and hire the services of a speech-writer with a good command of English.