THE GOVERNMENT’S covert advertising campaign for a ‘no-vote’ in the April referendum was officially launched on CyBC TV on Friday night by no lesser person than Papa-Dop’s closest aide and political soul-mate, Tasos Djionis. There were no fireworks, cocktail party or introductory discounts, but I suspect these are scheduled for later on in the campaign.
Djionis, who has more state titles than the Queen of England – he is director of the president’s office, the head of the Cyprus problem desk, chief of the secret service to mention a few – railed relentlessly against a settlement based on the Annan plan for all but five minutes of the one-hour-plus interview.
This was the first offering of a new interview show, misleadingly titled ‘Portraits’, and hosted by a close friend and fellow traveller of Papa-Dop, Dinos Eliades who is also a committed anti-Annanite. A more suitable and accurate name for Friday night’s show would have been, “I hate the Annan plan” or even better, “No to Annan”.
In almost 60 minutes of chat about the plan, Tasos with one ‘s’, could not find a single positive thing to say about it or half a reason in defence of a settlement. This is no exaggeration. His negativity was so relentless it verged on the comical. For everything he was asked about the plan – the constitutional arrangements, the economic aspects, the settlers, the property issue, the transitional periods, the federal state, the return of refugees – he found something suitably bad to say.
He delivered his bleak vision of a settlement in a very measured and mild fashion. His soft, gentle voice and the rueful, often melancholic, smile used to emphasise the gross injustices of the plan’s provision were almost disarming, and not what you’d expect from someone prophesying the onset of doom and destruction.
For fairness sake, it should be mentioned that he did turn positive for one fleeting moment. Asked about the consequences of a Greek Cypriot ‘no’ in the referendum, he said there would be none at all and that people should have no fears about rejecting the plan as all the threats made by foreigners were without substance.
IN KEEPING with the tradition of government advertising campaigns this had about as much subtlety and finesse as a sledgehammer. The interviewer is a close friend of SS and was a given a CyBC show to present because of this friendship and his anti-solution ideology rather than for his lacquered, bouffant, seventies hairstyle.
With Spyros Kettyros gone from the corporation for biting a woman ear, presidente needed to bring in another of his solution-hating disciples to spread the anti-Annan word. Eliades seemed the perfect choice, especially as he had received no reward for writing an embarrassingly gushing article about Tassos, every week in Politis, during the presidential election campaign.
So it was no surprise that the interviewer asked questions that made it dead easy for the guest to give negative responses. And of course Eliades, who fancies himself as a tough interviewer, never once challenged Djionis’ responses accepting them always as the indisputable truth. This type of deferential interviewing was last witnessed on Iraqi state TV, when the guest was Saddam Hussein.
As if the pair had not insulted our intelligence enough, we then had Djionis claiming that what he had said were his personal views, as if to imply that these were no shared by his boss. But if SS did not fully endorse what Djionis said, what business did the latter have going on television and lambasting the Annan plan? He is a civil servant, the presidente’s top advisor and a member of the negotiating team who cannot go on television undermining his allegedly pro-solution boss in such a blatant way.
Telling the world that we would be better off without a solution, is a very funny way of showing the great respect he claimed to have for SS. Here is his boss working day and night to bring us a solution based on the Annan plan and his closest and and most loyal aide is on telly informing the public that no matter how much the plan is improved it still sucks big-time.
THE CAMPAIGN for a ‘no-vote’ is now in full swing and is being waged on several fronts and Tassos is behind most of them. For instance all the Diko deputies who have been lambasting the settlement at every opportunity, would not be doing so if they did not have their leader’s blessing. Ditto Djionis.
In the last few weeks the government has played what it believes to be its strongest card – the economic cost of a settlement. It has leaked a study carried out by the Planning Bureau which has inflated the costs of re-unification to such a degree that you’d think we will be rebuilding Germany. It includes the construction of a federal presidential palace that would include a mini-golf and heated swimming pools, at a cost of 25 million bananas.
The report was used by our Finance Minister, and soon to be EU Commissioner, Marcos Kyprianou for some serious scare-mongering. If donors did not help us out with huge amounts of money, “I believe the whole economy will collapse,” warned Kyp junior, authoritatively, even though he is not exactly a candidate for a Nobel in economics, unless his late father arranged that for him as well.
THE GREAT authority in economics toned down his forecasts the following day after several ministerial colleagues, those controlled by the Akel commissar, said, in one voice that the cost of a settlement was of secondary importance.
Three Akel ministers – Christou, Kazamias and Lillikas – took a completely different line, completely undermining Papa-Dop’s advertising campaign. They said that the cost of a non-solution would be much greater, and that the benefits of re-unification would far outweigh the financial cost. A week earlier, Lillikas the commerce, industry and tourism minister, painted a very bleak picture about the prospects for tourist industry after a solution. This week he became Mr Solution At All Costs
Had his coffee been laced with pro-solution poison? More likely, the commissar gave instructions to his ministers to adopt a more positive approach towards the A-plan as he does not want Akel to be seen to be anti-solution. There is certainly a split in the government with Tassos’ ministers taking a hard-line and Christofias’ boys adopting a softer approach.
The suspicion is that the commissar, sensing that Tassos would urge the masses to vote against the plan (Djionis’ TV appearance adds substance to this theory) has decided to differentiate his party’s position. Come the referendum, the government alliance is unlikely to hold.
DIVISIONS are appearing in Disy as well with certain deputies refusing to follow the pro-solution line adopted by the Fuhrer. Three of them, have decided to change the law so that a 70 per cent majority would be needed for approval of the A-plan in a referendum. If they fail to do pull this off, they could use the referendum tricks adopted by military juntas, which always returned 99 per cent support for the dictator.
There are also divisions within the party about the study on the costs of a settlement, carried out by deputy leader Averof Neophytou, with help from the Yanks. Averof’s study found that the cost would be one third of what the Planning Bureau had forecast, but as his critics say he is not an authority on economics and does tend to accept the advice of the Yanks, who have an interest in playing down the cost, too readily.
If like us, you do not know which of the three studies, so far prepared, to believe do not worry because economists always get things wrong anyway.
RUMOURS that “lawyer with an eue for a good belly dancer” would resign rather than endorse the A-plan at a referendum have no truth in them whatsoever. He may not like the plan and would rather people rejected it, but the first lady is unlikely to let him surrender his presidency over some stupid peace plan.
The constitution he has prepared for the Greek Cypriot constituent state, maintains the presidential system and SS as presidente. One of the six changes he has proposed to A-plan, if accepted would enable him to be presidente of the fed state for another four years after his three-year stint as co-presidente with the Denktator or the latter’s unidentified aide. Are these the kind of proposals made by a guy who is planning on resigning?
OUR NEW constitution also provides for a 56-seat legislature. Is this necessary considering there will be 24 seats for Greek Bananiots in the lower House of the fed state and 24 seats in the upper House? If we are so concerned about the cost of the settlement why don’t we cut down the number of deputies by half? Not only will they keep the 56 seats, but the seats for Kyrenia will be maintained, which does not show great faith in the future prospects of the federal system.
KYRENIANS gathered last Sunday to insist that if they can’t return to their homes under the A-plan nobody else should be allowed to return either. Star of the show was the sinister-looking Bishop of Kyrenia, Pavlos whose recently- discovered patriotism has ‘phoney’ written all over it. Pavlos, who makes Iranian ayatollahs seem like dyed in the wool liberals, described the A-plan as “disastrous and satanic”.
Not to be outdone, Mayor of Kyrenia, Constantios Orologas kept the religious character of the meeting by saying it was “cursed and unacceptable”. Orologas, who has in the past fought to increase to remuneration of mayors of occupied towns and villages, does not believe the return of some 80,000 refugees to their homes is worth sacrificing his meaningless mayorship for.
Perhaps we should keep him as mayor of Kyrenia even after a solution. His title would be as absurdly meaningless as it is now and he will still have nothing to do.
ANOTHER fearless campaigner against the A-plan is Dr Faustus Lyssarides, who has been urging anyone who will listen to him to say the heroic Greek ‘no’. Dr Faustus, according to a report in Phileleftheros, was heroically resisting a government attempt to reduce the number of cops assigned to protect politicians.
He has 11 cops serving him and he is always driven around by minimum of two. I suspect that the main reason the old socialist windbag is so fiercely opposed to a solution is because he fears he will lose all his cops and consequently his sense of self-importance. Now if there was a provision in the A-plan allowing Faustus to keep 11 cops, he may change his position.
FORMER deputy Attorney-general Loucis Loucaides, who is currently a judge in European Court, also arrived on our shore to campaign against the satanic plan. On a Mega TV show, the inarticulate Loucaides laid into Alvaro de Soto’s assistant Didier Pfirter, whom he described as a low-calibre professional and a “so-called constitutionalist”, that nobody had heard of.
Loucaides is one to talk and pass judgment on others. Nobody had heard of him until Makarios, for unknown reasons, made him deputy AG. A guy who used his position in order not to pay the road tax on his car for several years, is hardly eligible to pass judgment on anyone’s professionalism.
SPEAKING of Makarios we have to mention an anecdote related on TV by the Bishop of Kition Chrysostomos on Thursday night. During a debate on the provisions of the A-plan, one of the guests, said that the late Archbishop had agreed to a federal settlement back in 1977 so why were we complaining about the federation on offer now?
Chrysostomos informed viewers that when Makarios had signed the High Level Agreement of ’77 he asked him why he had done such thing. “How will all refugees return to their homes under such an agreement,” Chrysostomos asked and Makarios reportedly, replied: “Don’t worry Tassos Papadopoulos has prepared a study which shows that all refugees will return to their homes.”
So why haven’t we presented this magic study at the negotiations yet? Or is it of the same quality and reliability as the ones prepared about the costs of a settlement.
