DISY opposes a report on the events that led up to the coup and invasion in 1974, because it would put an end to the opposition party’s right to misinform the public, the Chairman of the Committee for the File of Cyprus said yesterday.
Holding some of the parliamentary committee’s most confidential documents, EDEK’s Marinos Sizopoulos presented the media with his committee’s mandate.
This was a response to criticism from DISY’s representative on the committee, George Georgiou, who claimed the mandate didn’t demand a report with conclusions.
The Committee was authorised in 2006 to look into the events that led up to the coup and subsequent Turkish invasion in 1974.
When it was announced last week that the committee would be issuing its final report on the findings, DISY MPs Georgiou and Christos Pourgourides objected, saying it was impossible to reach an informed conclusion as successive Greek governments and parliaments had so far refused to hand over any official documents for the period.
But Sizopoulos wondered what hidden reasons lay behind the DISY reaction, given that Georgiou had been fully aware a report would be drawn up at the end.
What bothered DISY were the revelations that would be made, he said.
“The documents are not subjective. There is objective truth,” he said. “Certain documents deprive certain people of their right to exercise demagoguery and to misinform the people.”
He said it was DISY’s – and anyone else’s – right to not want a report to be issued.
“But no one has the right to alter facts and data that exist in an effort to justify their stance,” said Sizopoulos.
DISY’s first argument was that it was not in the committee’s mandate to conclude with a report, he said but presenting the mandate, Sizopoulos refuted this.
A report was to be prepared and presented to the House Plenum.
DISY’s second objection related to the release of such a report only months before the 2011 parliamentary elections.
Sizopoulos said when the committee started work in 2006, its aim had been to wrap up by December 2010. Also the Greek stance was something everyone had been aware of since 1997, he added.
“If DISY was aware of this too, why didn’t it say from the start that the committee shouldn’t start its operations unless it first receives the material,” Sizopoulos said.
He said as of now, the plan is to hand over the report to House President Marios Garoyian by January 31.
Ruling party AKEL’s general secretary Andros Kyprianou yesterday said he was saddened by certain people’s efforts “to avoid the possibility of recording the events in modern Cypriot history”, which he said would be the worse recipe for Cyprus’ society, preventing it from moving on from the past.
“Instead of doing some self reflection over events that have led Cyprus and the Cypriot people to negative developments, we are trying to write them off and unfortunately we are allowing the same things to be repeated,” said Kyprianou.
