AFTER a long thaw, the war drums have sounded between traditional archrivals AKEL and DISY over the contentious issue of security guarantees in a reunited Cyprus.
The row was triggered by comments from DISY boss Nicos Anastassiades, who wondered why certain quarters were making such a fuss over the guarantees, which sooner or later would appear on the agenda of the ongoing talks.
Keeping Turkish guarantees over Cyprus is anathema to most Greek Cypriots.
If Greek Cypriots were so opposed to this, challenged Anastassiades, then the logical thing to do would be to denounce the 1960 Treaty of Guarantees which gave Turkey, Britain and Greece rights of intervention.
The treaty is still in force today.
For his trouble, Anastassiades took sustained fire from the usual suspects DIKO and EDEK. What was different this time round was that AKEL jumped on the bandwagon.
AKEL heavyweight Nikos Katsourides, whose jousts with Anastassiades are legendary, said the DISY leader had jumped the gun.
“By this rationale, we should also denounce everything else we are seeking to change [in the negotiations], and which have no relation to the 1960 agreements,” he quipped.
Katsourides went on to urge Anastassiades that “on-air” negotiations were not the way to go.
AKEL’s rebuke has reportedly infuriated Anastassiades. It is probably the first time the two parties have clashed so directly on Cyprus since the communists came to power. For eight months now, the right-wing party has given the AKEL government and Christofias carte blanche. This has resulted in a strange state of affairs, where the criticism on the President has come from his supposed allies – DIKO and EDEK.
To Anastassiades, who has been taking flak from his own party for his soft stance, it must probably have seemed that AKEL was being ungrateful for the support.
He duly hit back, slamming the government for its education policy and weighing into the controversy over whether school students should be allowed to express party-political views.
The European Party meanwhile joined the mix, with no.2 Nikos Koutsou accusing Anastassiades outright of espousing Turkish views on the matter of the guarantees.
Koutsou said this behaviour was typical of Anastassiades, and that the DISY boss had “lost his way” ever since he visited Ankara in 2005, a few months after the Annan Plan referenda.
Koutsou cited his favourite example from antiquity, likening Anastassiades’ trip to Themistocles’ proverbial visit to the court of Artaxerxes in Susa, modern-day Diyarbakir. In effect, he was calling Anastassiades a turncoat.
So is the DISY-AKEL détente over? Stavros Tombazos, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cyprus, says we shouldn’t read too much into the skirmish.
“I feel it was an isolated episode… it’s going to blow over soon,” he told the Mail.
The analyst also thought that Anastassiades would retain his grip on the party despite a current seeking to undermine his leadership.
It was only recently that the DISY leader successfully fended off an onslaught by the former governor of the Central Bank Christodoulos Christodoulou, in what many saw as a disguised power play.
“A lot of people inside DISY share Anastassiades’ views on the Cyprus problem. He’s certainly not alone,” said Tombazos.
