THERE could not be an election campaign without a pointless debate about the form the solution of the Cyprus problem should take. During the 2008 election campaign the three main candidates all agreed that the settlement should be a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation (BBF), but the Tassos Papadopoulos camp insisted that it needed to have ‘the right content’, while Demetris Christofias insisted that it should feature a strong central government. Ioannis Kasoulides, to his credit, avoided getting into this childish game.
The BBF has begun featuring in the current campaign, but there are different takes on it now. Giorgos Lillikas, who as Papadopoulos’ campaign manager five years ago, supported it as long as it had the ‘right content’ now claims that content was irrelevant and those supporting BBF were essentially supporting partition. President Christofias has been zealously championing BBF in his frequent public speeches – so has the AKEL candidate Stavros Malas – warning that if we abandoned it, permanent partition would be certainty. If both supporting and opposing BBF would lead to partition we are faced with a serious intellectual puzzle.
The AKEL/Malas camp have decided to recruit the assistance of Archbishop Makarios, despite the fact that he passed away 35 years ago and what he may have thought is of no consequence today. Makarios’ remarks “are clearly in favour of a solution of two zones, bi-zonal,” said Malas spokesman Takis Hadjigeorgiou explaining that even if BBF was not mentioned by name in the High Level agreement of 1977, “common sense said that this was what it referred to.” But there is not much common sense using the views of someone who has been dead for 35 years to support an argument. What if Makarios supported BBF?
The perennial problem is that politicians only deal in theories when talking about the Cyprus issue, always ignoring the facts. The facts are that Christofias was negotiating a BBF for four years but got nowhere near an agreement, because despite the rhetoric he was not really committed to it. And how realistic is Lillikas in claiming that by denouncing BBF and starting negotiations from scratch we would arrive at a fair and just settlement? Is there a chance in a million he would find anyone on the Turkish side to engage in negotiations on the basis he wants to set?
Nicos Anastasiades has avoided the issue, presumably so he would not alienate his DIKO allies who are more hard-line on the Cyprus issue, despite supporting BBF, but “with the right content.” Anastasiades will be obliged to give his views in the second televised debate, as it would focus on the Cyprus issue, but he could fudge the BBF issue in order to keep his allies happy.
After all, it is probably no longer an option – not that this would stop the candidates talking about it.
