MANY PEOPLE would have been mildly amused to hear the proposal made by the Green Party last week, with regard to the Cyprus problem. There should be a referendum so that Greek Cypriots can decide what type of settlement they want, said the Greens, whose main message in this election campaign is that the big parties are out of touch with the electorate.
The implication was that the president was negotiating a deal that would have no popular support and would, inevitably, be rejected in a referendum. While there seems to be superficial logic to this argument, in reality it is nothing more than a vacuous electoral ploy. But a newspaper commentator also adopted the idea, writing yesterday that a referendum on the nature of a settlement would force the president to pursue a compromise approved by the majority of people.
But neither the pundit nor the Greens told us what people would be voting for in this referendum. One option would be ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’ which is currently being negotiated, another would be ‘return to the 1960 constitution’. Then there could be ‘negotiated partition’ as well as ‘European solution’. Perhaps we should also have the option of ‘war of liberation’.
Already problems begin to appear: should ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’ have sub-divisions regarding rotating presidency and the number of Turkish settlers who would remain – because if it has ‘the right content’, even DIKO and EDEK, would be in favour? In fact, of the parliamentary parties, only the Greens and EUROKO, which together represent no more than seven per cent of the vote, are in principle opposed to a federation. So should there be additional questions under each of the main options in the proposed referendum?
But there are other problems. Options such as the ‘return to the 1960 constitution’ and ‘European solution’ would never be achieved through negotiations because the Turkish side would not accept them. It would be absurd for people to vote for something that is not a realistic option. Of course the Greens and EUROKO, perhaps even DIKO and EDEK, could insist these were viable options that people could cast their vote for.
The absurdity of the proposal does not end there. After the proposed referendum, would President Christofias be obliged to go to the UN to say that the settlement he had been negotiating with the Turkish Cypriot side for the last three years was unacceptable to the Greek Cypriots, and that he would therefore quit the talks? The truth is that if the parties opposed to the settlement under negotiation were honest, they would make it clear that partition would be preferable instead of claiming there are other viable options to choose from.
