By Martin Hellicar
THE MOST popular word for news headlines for 1998 was, without a doubt, “S- 300s”, but it was not all Russian-made missiles and Cyprus problem out there.
The first two months of the year were dominated by the Presidential elections (which, admittedly, were in turn dominated by the S-300 issue).
A record seven candidates registered on January 10, but there was never any doubt who the two main contenders were. Incumbent Glafcos Clerides was, even as his 80th birthday approached, seeking re-election for a second five- year term with the support of right-wing Disy. In the opposite corner stood the pretender, former Foreign Minister George Iacovou, backed by a somewhat shaky alliance between left-wing Akel and centre-right Diko.
Diko had backed Clerides last time round, but their leader, Spyros Kyprianou, abandoned that winning pact with Disy claiming Clerides had broken a pre-election “promise” he made in 1993: that, come 1998, Disy would back Kyprianou for President.
Diko tried but failed to convince Attorney-general Alecos Markides to run as a “unifying” independent candidate and in the end decided to throw in their lot with Akel and Iacovou.
Kyprianou grabbed most of the headlines in the run-up to polling day on February 8. The ex-President unleashed a series of increasingly vitriolic and apparently bizarre attacks on Clerides.
Kyprianou alleged the US were “plotting” to get Clerides re-elected. He then claimed the intelligence services (Kyp) were also plotting to secure the incumbent’s return. Next, Kyprianou said the Presidential palace was scheming to secure his political “annihilation”.
The palace had even sunk as low as “buying” votes, the Diko leader alleged. Clerides’s camp hit back by charging Kyprianou with turning nepotism into as “science” during his 10 years as President.
In election campaigning notable for mud-slinging rather than debate on issues, Clerides’s main slogans were that he would bring the Russian S-300 missiles to Cyprus and deliver a Cyprus settlement.
His opponent put his foot in it by stating, during a live television interview, that he would not bring the S-300s if he were elected. Kyprianou reacted with horror, and Iacovou was forced to amend his statement the following day, saying he would bring the ground-to-air missiles earlier than Clerides if he was voted in.
The big day came and produced a virtual dead heat, forcing a second round of polling a week later, on February 15.
In the intervening week, Clerides managed to win the support of more of the defeated first round contenders and eventually won a narrow victory, beating Iacovou by just 6,657 votes.
March saw the EU giving the green light for the start of accession negotiations with Cyprus after the government tabled an invitation to the Turkish Cypriots to participate in the talks.
Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash promptly declared the UN-led settlement talks were “dead.” UN envoy Diego Cordovez visited the island but failed to persuade Denktash to change his stance.
Father Christoforos, the chairman of one of the two committees for relatives of the missing, was forced to resign in disgrace after he publicised a Canadian Cypriot’s bogus claims that 14 of the missing were “alive and living in a friendly neighbouring country.”
On April 7, US envoy to Cyprus Richard Holbrooke arrived promising to “knock heads together” to kick-start the peace talks process. He failed, and left vowing his next visit would be his last if no progress was achieved.
Holbrooke re-appeared in early May, unveiled a new phone system linking the occupied and government-controlled areas and then left. He is yet to return.
On April 28, Denktash, in an exclusive interview with the Cyprus Mail, warned that “partition loomed.”
Another major story to hit the headlines in April concerned homosexuality, and a long-postponed House vote on a bill decriminalising gay sex between consenting adults.
The Council of Europe (CoE) made it clear Cyprus would be in its bad books if it did not legalise gay sex, but Archbishop Chrysostomos warned that legalisation would mean Cyprus would “fill” with homosexuals.
George Vassiliou, head of Cyprus’s EU negotiating team, warned deputies that a failure to approve the amendment could jeopardise the EU accession process.
Consideration of the bill, pending since 1996, was again postponed in April, but, on May 21, deputies finally bit the bullet, ignoring the protests of priests camped outside parliament and passing the controversial bill.
Spring also saw the arrest of two Aids carriers for having unprotected sex.
On April 27, Manchester-born Cypriot Chrysavghi Zarzour, 26, was sentenced to seven months imprisonment by a Nicosia court for having unprotected sex with two man. A month later, 28-year-old Larnaca waiter Andreas Michael was jailed for 12 months for having unprotected sex with two women. Six months later, Michael was handed an identical sentence after he pleaded guilty to charges of knowingly infecting his Swedish wife with the HIV virus.
Summer began on a sour note. On June 4 Larnaca Taxi driver Kyriacos Zanas, 36, was jailed for 20 years for the vicious murder of French tourist Françoise Chomik on Christmas Day 1997. The Larnaca court heard that Zanas had picked up the 49-year-old tourist from the airport and shot her on route to her Limassol hotel after an argument over the fare. He then put her body in the boot of his cab before going to a Christmas party in Larnaca. After the party he drove to Xylotimbou village, 10km from Larnaca, before dumping Chomik’s body down a 100-foot dry well.
The month then turned “hot” on the Cyprus problem front with Greek F-16 fighter jets landing at the new Paphos air base and Turkey responding by sending war planes to the north in response two days later.
June 29 marked the beginning of the boat people saga when 106 immigrants were rescued, starving and thirsty, off a Syrian fishing boat found drifting off Cyprus.
The Arab and African immigrants, who all subsequently sought asylum, were housed in a three-star Limassol hotel to await their fate. Two months later, boat people clashed with police at the hotel amid rumours some of them were to be forcibly deported. Following the disturbances the Africans among the boat people were transferred to cramped police cells in Larnaca. Police are being investigated for their strong-arm tactics in quelling a later disturbance at the Larnaca holding cells.
Twenty-three of the boat-people have since been granted asylum and an another 15 deported, while the rest remain cooped up in the hotel and police cells six months after their sea rescue.
In October, another “death boat” full of immigrants ran aground on the Akrotiri coast, within the British bases. Almost all of the 75 mostly Iraqi immigrants in the boat are still being held by base authorities.
In July, UN envoy Diego Cordovez, the EU’s Cyprus envoy, Sir David Hannay, and the US Cyprus co-ordinator, Thomas Miller, all visited, failed in their efforts to break the talks deadlock.
August was notable for its unbearable heat. A heat-wave in the first half of the month killed over 60, mostly elderly, people.
1998 was also the year when gangland violence reared its ugly head again after two years of relative peace.
On July 31, just six weeks after he and his two brothers were acquitted of the 1997 attempted murder of Larnaca gambling club owner Antonis Fanieros, Andros Aeroporos, 32, was gunned down outside a Limassol cabaret.
Police fears that the killing signalled the start of a new round of tit-for- tat violence between gangs vying for control of lucrative gambling and prostitution rackets were confirmed in early August, when Fanieros’ son Loucas had a narrow escape when his car came under machine-gun fire in Larnaca.
There was another shooting attack and two bomb attacks that same month, leaving three gangland figures injured.
On September 16, unemployed bouncer Marios Panayides was shot dead at a Limassol petrol station. Exactly one month later, Aradipou councillor Andreas Xiourouppas survived being shot outside his home.
Then, on December 16, Andros’s older brother, Hambis, was gunned down in broad daylight outside Limassol. Two policemen have been arrested in connection with Hambis’s murder.
But if it has been a bad second half to the year for the police, then it has been a veritable annus horribilis for the Orthodox Church of Cyprus.
In June, the first of over 30 allegations of fraud against Bishop Chrysanthos of Limassol surfaced. The following month, the Bishop disappeared to Greece just as British detectives arrived on the island to question him over his alleged involvement in a $3.7 million scam to defraud British investors. Chrysanthos did eventually re-appear for questioning, denying the allegations outright.
As the Summer progressed, the number of financial scams allegedly involving the Bishop grew and grew.
Cyprus police launched an investigation, as did the Holy Synod. In October the Synod announced it had found Chrysostomos guilty of breaching ecclesiastical law. On November 23 the Bishop resigned after being presented with an eight-point indictment by the Synod. The Synod decided to suspend him for two years. The police investigation is ongoing.
In the meantime, the Church defrocked one priest and suspended another after they were photographed leaving a Paphos building which housed Romanian strippers.
The Church hardly had time to draw breath after the body blow dealt by the Chrysanthos scandal before the Bishop of Paphos launched into a sordid and extended attack on a Mount Athos elder. Chrysostomos saved no blushes in his pre-Christmas allegations against elder Iosif, saying the 80-year-old monk had “sexually molested” nuns and young girls during his stay at a Paphos monastery 17 years ago.
The Bishop also levelled undefined “immorality” allegations against a close associate of Iosif’s, abbot Athanasios of Machairas monastery. Athanasios’s supporters claim Chrysostomos’ sole aim in making these lurid allegations is to undermine abbot Athanasios’ candidacy for Limassol Bishop (to replace the disgraced Chrysanthos).
Archbishop Chrysostomos has tried to intervene to stem the tide of lurid allegations from his namesake, while elder Iosif’s monastery has threatened to sue the Bishop.
It hasn’t been a good year for Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides either.
Persistent and detailed corruption allegations levelled against him by Disy deputy and House Watchdog committee chairman Christos Pourgourides eventually led to President Clerides ordering the Auditor general, Spyros Christou, to investigate.
The investigation, ordered on September 19, led the cabinet, on the advice of Attorney-general Alecos Markides, to appoint two criminal investigators further to probe two of Pourgourides’s 14 accusations against the minister. Never before had an acting minister been the subject of such an investigation.
The appointment of the criminal investigators on November 21 prompted Michaelides, who has always maintained his complete innocence, to tender his resignation. Clerides did not accept it.
A few days ago, Markides announced that Michaelides had been cleared by the criminal investigators.
It has also been a bad year for the Water development department (WDD) and Cyprus-Israel relations.
As if a grinding drought were not enough, the WDD has had to suffer the ignominy of it’s director being brought to trial, convicted and jailed for abuse of his authority. Lakis Christodoulou was brought before a Nicosia court following a police investigation launched after a May 20 raid on the building site of his luxury home outside Nicosia uncovered WDD employees moonlighting for their boss.
In August, Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous took the unprecedented step of issuing a public apology for the sorry state the government had allowed water resources to get into.
With dams near-dry and no rain in sight, Themistocleous promised mobile desalination plants would be brought to the rescue. Red tape has stalled the arrival of the mobile plants. Meanwhile, every last drop is being sucked out of the ground in an effort to keep taps running.
Cyprus’s relations with Israel, under strain over the Israel’s military pact with Turkey, took a distinct turn for the worse on November 7 when two Israelis were arrested in Zygi village on suspicion of spying on National Guard positions.
Israel has made it plain it wants Udi Hargov, 37, and Igal Damary, 49, returned home, but Cyprus police have forged ahead with charging the two suspects. Israel has not even managed to get the two men released into the custody of the Israeli embassy in Nicosia till their trial.
Israel has not denied Hargov and Damary are Mossad agents.
On December 2, a tour guide discovered the mutilated dead bodies of two Chinese students dumped down a 300-foot ravine in the Troodos mountains. Police arrested two Chinese fellow-students of the victims’ as suspects. Investigators say the motive for the vicious murder was robbery.
