THE AKEL general secretary went to sleep on Good Friday with a ‘yes’ and woke up on Saturday with a ‘no’.
A ‘no’ that he did not have the political courage to support, so he concealed it under a last minute demand for postponement of the referenda. AKEL also asked for assurances that the solution would be enforced. But in the two years during which he has been negotiating the Annan plan, was it at midnight on Good Friday that he realised the danger? Did he not consider these dangers when the party’s political bureau decided on a ‘yes’? Christofias quoted statements by Turkish army chief Hilmi Ozkok about the dangers of a solution. But did he have a better impression of the Turkish generals before Ozkok had made the statements?
These are all excuses. Christofias was scared to assume his responsibilities as a real leader and started deluding us that he was seeking assurances. The tragedy is that not only did he try to pull the wool over our eyes, he started taking the rest of the world for a ride. The US Secretary of State Colin Powell moved heaven and earth, meeting after meeting was held among the governments of all the big powers in the world to issue a resolution that Christofias could use as a fig leaf to say ‘yes’.
At the same time, his matchstick man in government, Foreign Minister George Iakovou, was demolishing in Moscow everything that Powell built in New York. And so, on top of Tassos Papadopoulos, Christofias too became an unreliable interlocutor to the international community.
Christofias went back from his ‘yes’ because he bowed to Papadopoulos’ blackmail that he would kick AKEL out of the government. His choices prove that it is not in his priorities to intervene radically in society, to be at the forefront of a new era for Cyprus.
He does not want to be present at the rendez-vous with history. It is enough for him to be Papadopoulos’ partner in order to appoint temporary workers and cleaners in the hospitals. This is Christofias’ ambition for the role of the Left in a modern society.
In the first years of the 1960s, Papadopoulos and Interior Minister Polykarpos Georkadjis’ thugs went round left-wing associations and forced the clientele to shut them and go to sleep. The old AKEL members know these things, which were written on the front pages of Haravghi.
Today, the Left is going through a different kind of humiliation: it denies the future and it commends ‘darkness’. Back then, Papadopoulos’ men wore hoods and wielded arms; now they wear ties and engage in communication policies.
At the AKEL conference, Christofias slammed everyone except himself. He knows better than anyone else that Papadopoulos does not want a solution. He refused to negotiate in Switzerland so that nothing positive would come out. He tolerated him for two months grinding down the plan and did nothing to stop this unethical and politically dishonest effort, and now he is supposedly angry at the anonymous circles who demonised the plan.
He does not dare to open a rift with Papadopoulos because he cannot face his personal responsibilities for his choices in the presidential elections.
How can he now assume his responsibility for the revival of nationalism and chauvinism in Cyprus?
How will he deal with history’s judgement when it will record that the nationalists dug the grave of Cyprus as a united state; that the pseudo-patriots buried it and that AKEL as Pontius Pilate, placed the tombstone?
AKEL is currently in a phase of political and ideological confusion. The Cypriots have taken a critical decision that will define the future of entire generations. And the biggest party, with 80 years of political and social struggles behind it, has not taken a clear position. The New Horizons, a party representing 1.8 per cent of the electorate, have managed to define the political agenda, with AKEL tragically trailing behind.
AKEL said ‘no’ but it did not want it to be resounding. Our ‘no’, Christofias said, is different from that of the nationalists. But there was no option for two different kinds of ‘no’ on the ballot paper. There was just one, that supported by Papadopoulos, AKEL, New Horizons, the fanatic priests, and the other ‘patriotic forces’.
Christofias includes DIKO and its president in the “democratic patriotic forces”. I read Papadopoulos’ speech three times and I maintain that the message it sent out was one of political thuggery.
It was the same speech that Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash made before the Turkish assembly, with the only difference that one spoke in Greek and the other in Turkish.
I heard DISY chief Nicos Anastassiades’ speech before the party’s congress, which should have been delivered by Christofias on Easter Saturday. At this critical stage, progress is expressed by Anastassiades and conservatism by Papadopoulos. That is why AKEL cannot be allowed from now on to claim to represent the patriotic democratic forces, but only that it supports conservatism, regression and political thuggery.
