SOMETIMES it is very difficult to understand the thinking of President Anastasiades. For weeks now, responding to the demands and criticism of the opposition parties, he had been giving public assurance that the Cyprus Republic would be present at the January 12, international conference in Geneva. In fact, on December 17, the acting government spokesman emphatically declared that for the president there could be no conference without the participation of the Cyprus Republic.
This raised the question of whether he was prepared to jeopardise the peace process over an issue that had never existed in the past. The Cyprus Republic was never represented at inter-communal talks at home or abroad. The biggest defender of Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos happily attended the talks in Burgenstock in 2004 as the leader of Greek Cypriots, not making the slightest issue about its absence. Neither Edek nor Diko (the only parties from the rejectionist camp that existed back then) thought the Republic’s absence was worth making a fuss about.
As for Ambassador Tasos Tzionis, who recently wrote a long-winded, legalistic article arguing that the absence of the Republic would be a political catastrophe, he said nothing about its absence from Burgenstock in 2004, when he was the director of the president’s diplomatic office. This was because he knew that Papadopoulos had no intention of agreeing to a settlement, whereas now there is an opportunity of a deal, he and the rest of the rejectionists have been making a fuss to apply pressure on Anastasiades and present him as a weak and unprincipled negotiator.
The sad thing is that Anastasiades has allowed them to do this by pandering to them, instead of speaking openly about the matter from day one. By giving public assurances about the Republic’s presence he helped turn it into an issue of vital importance, while being fully aware that he would be attending a five-party conference (it was what he had agreed with Mustafa Akinci on December 1) and that the Republic would not be represented.
Yesterday, he finally came clean, saying that it would be a five-party conference, with the president also representing the Cyprus Republic. Why had he not said this from the beginning? What had he hoped to achieve by not making this clear? He has now given more ammunition to the rejectionists to fire at him. Not only did he help them turn the Republic’s presence into a red line, he has also strengthened their claims that he was untrustworthy. He was accused of backtracking and misleading the people for 35 days and they had a point.
How many more times will the president shoot himself in the foot for the sake of delaying the inevitable political attacks by a few days or weeks?
