LAST SUNDAY one of the most drastic changes in political behaviour, in the history of Cyprus, took place. It still seems incredible. One in three Akel voters, last Sunday, decided not to do what they had been doing, with religious zeal, for the past six decades, that is, since the time we started holding elections in Cyprus.
Before last Sunday, on an election day, the Akel voter would get up early in the morning, wash and shave in a hurry, wake up the members of his family who could vote, call his parents and in-laws to remind them to vote, go out with his wife and kids, knock on the door of his comrade who lives two doors down the road so they could walk together to the neighbourhood election centre in order to exercise their democratic right.
For the first time in the history of the party, last Sunday, one in three leftist citizens did not follow the above-mentioned ritual. He and the Mrs did not head to the district election centre and did not go into the cubicle for the sacred ritual of placing a cross in the box in the ‘Akel’ column of the ballot paper.
Our left-wing fellow citizen, last Sunday, committed a heroic political act. He carried out his own personal revolution. We may have been mocking him for years, calling him a sheep. We may have joked that he would even vote for a donkey if the Akel General-secretary told him to do so. Well, not any more. The sheep has turned into a proud lion. He refused to blindly obey the bizarre diktats issued by Comrade Christofias and the party nomenclature. He let his frustration with his party get the better of him. His patience snapped and he decided to rebel.
The message sent by the Akel voters to their leadership was resoundingly clear. It was a resounding slap in the face of the leadership for the ‘resounding’ no in last April’s referendum. They wanted to punish their leadership, which, betraying the party’s history, took a decision in favour of partition in the referendum so as not to ruin its alliance with President Papadopoulos.
And the two champions of the ‘no-campaign’, Christofias and Nicos Katsourides, resorted to some ludicrous explanations for the causes of this revolution, in a blatant attempt to mislead public opinion. On election night, they attributed the low turn-out to the heat, the fact that voting was not compulsory, and the decision of some of Akel’s voters to back Edek so it could elect an MEP. When Christofias realised that nobody was taking his explanations seriously, he resorted to his trump card – the ogre of imperialism. He started talking about the Anglo-American axis which was “behind the coup and the invasion”, naively believing that this rhetoric would bring the sheep back to the fold.
It was inevitable that he Christofias would try to shift blame away from the leadership, but now amount of hackneyed rhetoric could hide the truth. The Akel voter, for close to 60 years now, was never deterred by the heat, or the cold, from going to the election centre to vote for his party. Nor was it an issue that three or four thousand Akel members had decided to vote for Edek. The issue was that one third of Akel voters did not bother to cast a vote.
And the reason is crystal clear. In the 2001 parliamentary elections, Akel secured 35 per cent of the vote. Since then, the party has made two political choices. First, it elected Papadopoulos president. Second, it killed off any hope for the re-unification of the island by deciding to reject the Annan plan.
Only fools do not realise that last Sunday’s snub, constituted an emphatic reply by left-wing citizens to Christofias whose choices cemented the ‘no-vote’ and partition.
Only the deaf cannot hear the voice of protest with which betrayed Akel members have been addressing their leadership, a voice that has started to be heard at branch meetings of the party. It is along the following lines: “Get out of our sight, you have betrayed us, you have made us ashamed of being leftist. You are no leaders. The only true leader is Anastassiades”.
