By George Koumoulli
What is happening today in the political scene of Cyprus is grotesque.
The President Nikos Christodoulides, when he is abroad, clearly states that our goal is the IGC.
For example, exactly a month ago, in an interview with ERT, he said: “Our effort is focused on developing a European initiative for the solution of the Cyprus problem, always within the framework of the United Nations, because the solution we seek is a bizonal, bicommunal federation and we are not discussing anything else.”
But when he is in Cyprus, he never says clearly, at least in the presence of the leaders of the parties that support him, that the IGC is the only solution we seek “and we do not discuss anything else”.
And how to do it anyway? The two largest parties backing him are anti-federal. EDEK is clearly in favour of the unitary state and, if I understand correctly, is in favour of reinstating the 1960 Constitution with the 13 amendments proposed by Makarios.
DIKO indirectly rejects the IGC, since it envisions it with the right content, i.e. with Greek Cypriot suzerainty.
Now, how the PD’s pursuit of the IGC reconciles with the positions of the parties that support him and those of far-right politicians has not been answered. “Tell me your friends to tell you who you are,” the people say. Therefore, not only the Turkish Cypriots with whom we are trying to find a solution at last, but also the foreign diplomats should be at a loss.
In short, Christodoulides’ political ambivalence is manifested in verbal behaviors such as “yes but no”, “the issue will be examined”, “I want and I do not want”, “maybe, we will see”, “I want but I can’t”, etc.
The President made the same mistake as Makarios, who vacillated between possible and desirable. The presence of simultaneous behaviors that alternate and underlying conflicting desires or emotions – e.g. feasible-desirable, IFR – two states – results in beliefs that result in procrastination and inability to make decisions. A procrastinator ends up being completely unreliable.
Unfortunately, our history is scattered with such procrastination for which this ill-fated place paid dearly. And it is no coincidence that we took out the reputation of the untrustworthy.
A recent example -and what a sample!- of our procrastination and unreliability was the presence of N. Christodoulides at the celebrations for April 1st at the “Tassos Papadopoulos-Eleftherias” stadium, with the huge banners “Enosis and only enosis” and “Greece Cyprus – enosis”.
Such banners may not have caused a sensation among Greek Cypriots, who are a common spectacle at football matches, but Turkish Cypriots and foreign diplomats and observers were left speechless, dazzled and astonished.
It solemnly confirms the chameleonism of the PD. The speakers at the celebration demanded the union of Cyprus with Greece at a time when, supposedly, we are trying to persuade the Turkish Cypriot leadership to abandon its goal of two states.
The President of the EOKA Associations of 1955-59 warmly applauded the speech of the President of the EOKA Associations, who stressed that “the conditions want new Afxentiou, new Evagores”, i.e. he proposed the war solution of the Cyprus problem.
The applause that the president of EOKA Associations received from his President is the greatest measure of destruction of trust.
It pulverises what has been achieved in the area of trust between the two communities.
The PD, carried away by the extreme right, has not realized the tragedy and impasse of this self-destruction. Who Turkish Cypriots, seeing banners such as “Enosis and only enosis” and listening to speeches on the creation of a new EOKA, will consent to the abolition of Turkey’s rights of intervention? Because, let’s not forget, that as repugnant as TMT is to Greek Cypriots, EOKA is equally repugnant to Turkish Cypriots, the ingenious political analyst will wonder whether our President’s innermost desire is a two-state solution.
I believe that the celebrations for 1 April, at least in the way they are being done now, should come to an end. In saying this, I quote the saying of Dionysios Solomos: “The nation must regard as national what is true.” And the truth is that the struggle of EOKA only accumulated suffering: the traditional friendship between Greek and Turkish Cypriots was shattered, the friendship between Greece and Turkey was broken, it provoked the pogrom against the Greeks of Constantinople, many lads were misled (whose heroism we all recognize), sacrificing their lives for an unattainable goal (Greece itself told us so),
EOKA B was staffed by EOKA A and with the cooperation of the junta the greatest disaster suffered by our country in its long history was caused. I challenge anyone to mention just one good thing that came out of this struggle. He will not be able to. Why, then, all these triumphalisms? The claim that if we did not fight we would not gain our independence is refuted by the fact that after 1960, no UK colony remained a colony against its will. It is therefore worth knowing our history because, as the English historian Trevelyan said, “the future is shaped by the present, and the present by the past”.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of CypriumNews.
