THIS COLUMN did not have to see the president’s top advisor and right hand man, Tasos Djionis, expounding his negative views about the Annan plan on television to understand the devious political game being played by Tassos Papadopoulos in order to avoid a settlement. Even before his election this column had been pointing out that he remained the man he had been in the Eighties. We had argued that some things never change, no matter how hard we may try to achieve this. Hard-line rejectionism, for this man, is not just a figure of speech. It is a way of life. It is the foundation on which he has built his political career.
With all the things happening, nobody can be justified in having any doubts about the president’s real intentions. The game he is playing is pretty obvious. First, he made sure he terrified everyone by presenting the plan as something akin to the plague. His critical comments, which culminated, last summer, in his description of the plan as the “legitimisation of the invasion”, have been well-documented. Then he gave assistance to Rauf Denktash, in the elections in the north, by letting the Turkish Cypriots know that, even if their leader had accepted the Annan plan in The Hague, he would not have signed it.
In New York last month, Turkey’s unexpected change of stance on Cyprus messed up his plans and designs. He was forced to sign the deal stipulating negotiations, the resolution of differences by the UN Secretary-general and the holding of separate referenda. And now, he keeps making public pronouncements, on a daily basis, about Rauf Denktash’s inflexible attitude at the negotiations, in order to stir up public anger and resentment. Essentially, he is helping Denktash achieve his objective, which is no different from his own – to antagonise the Greek Cypriots into rejecting the settlement in the referendum.
In addition to his personal contribution to this rejectionist campaign, Papadopoulos has recruited the help of a number of his subordinates, such as Djionis and most of his party’s deputies, including Fyttis, Kleanthous, Angelides etc. I cannot think anyone is stupid enough to swallow the ludicrous claim that these people are supposedly expressing their personal opinions when they are railing against the plan.
Papadopoulos must have a very low regard of people’s intelligence if he genuinely thought that they would have actually believed that Djionis, his subordinate and chief advisor at the negotiations, would have dared to indulge in such an unrelenting polemic against the plan on television, without not only the president’s consent but his express orders. DIKO’s deputy leader Nikos Kleanthous would not have been celebrating about the findings of the opinion polls (showing that the majority of people were opposed to the plan) if he did not have direct instructions to do so from the president.
In this way, more or less, we will arrive at the referendum and the disastrous plan would still be considered disastrous. In such a climate people would reject the plan, without Papadopoulos having to, publicly, urge them to do so. Thus, the president will have realised his objective and blame the rejection of the plan on the will of the people.
This is why I have described Papadopoulos’ game as devious. We are witnessing a classic example of political duplicity. On the one hand, he signed the agreement in New York and has been going to negotiations, at which he is, supposedly, working hard in order to secure a deal, while, on the other hand, he is making sure that people are terrified of a solution and creating the conditions that would make them vote ‘no’ in a referendum.
Of course, neither he nor his flunkeys have bothered to explain to people the devastating consequences of a Turkish Cypriot ‘yes’ and Greek Cypriot ‘no’ in the April referenda. The Turkish occupation army would stay in Cyprus indefinitely, Famagusta, Morphou etc would be lost forever, refugees will never get their properties back, and we will have two separate states on the island — the boundaries of which would be today’s dividing line.
The most infuriatingly provocative aspect of this game is not Papadopoulos’ strident opposition to a settlement, which, after all, he had always embraced. It is his hypocrisy. If he did not want a solution why did he agree to the UN-proposed procedure when he was in New York? And as he made a complete mess of things in New York, he should have had the guts to get up and tell people, like a man, that he disagreed with the procedure and would not be attending negotiations. At least that way he would not have to orchestrate this pathetic farce.
