Brave, blunt and entirely necessary

Congratulations on your brave, blunt and entirely necessary editorial
of Tuesday, October 1, and congratulations also to President Nicos
Anastasiades for his courage in spelling out plainly to the people of
the island the need for a federal constitution.
This common-sense reality has for far too long been shunned. The 1960 state has indeed (as the President put it) “run its course;” and it really is time (as he argues) “to build a new state model that will respond to the new era.”
In your editorial you correctly surmise that “the state re-building
will take place with the help, and under the close supervision of
outsiders, the much-maligned troika.”
However, inevitably other bodies (such as the United Nations, heavily involved in the island’ s problems for many years) and other countries (above all, Greece and Turkey) will be implicated.
One can only hope that the governments of those states will encourage a federal settlement and not revert to sterile nationalism.
I write as an Englishman – despite my Turkish-sounding name – who for 55 years has known and loved this island and its people on both sides of
the Green Line — ever since I was sent as a young Fleet Street
foreign correspondent to report upon the independence struggle in the
1950s.
Over the years I continued to cover the ups-and-downs of Cyprus
in various BBC incarnations as the Corporation’s Commonwealth
Correspondent, United Nations Correspondent, and, finally, as its
Diplomatic Correspondent. In other words, for most of my 84 years I
have watched the problems of Cyprus get deeper and deeper. A new start HAS to be made. It sounds as if this year’s newcomer to the Presidency realises this and is about to “have a go.”
Good luck to him and to all Cypriots!
John Osman – Hellenicised by my old Greek-Cypriot chums to ‘Osmanides’ – Paphos

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.