By George Koumoulli
The presidential elections in Cyprus are held in a multi-party system, in which many political parties from across the political spectrum participate in the elections, in order to elect their chosen one to the Presidency of the Republic.
However, as the scene of the 2023 elections has evolved, the Cypriot voter has no choice but to vote for someone who represents the Right wing.
I believe the minds of many observers will travel associatively to the USSR. As much as it may be it seems strange, there were elections in the once-mighty Soviet Union. The Soviet people voted for the members of the legislature, called the Supreme Soviet, every four years, but all the candidates belonged to the communist party since the action of other parties was illegal.
Undoubtedly, the dictatorial regime of the Soviet Union cannot be compared to that of Cyprus in 2023, but in this case, that is, in the selection of candidates in the upcoming elections, the similarity is striking.
And it is such because, while in the Soviet Union the people had no choice but to vote for someone from the Communist Party, we have no choice but to vote for someone from the right. It will be objected, perhaps, that there are candidates other than DISY and AKEL who put forward right-wing candidates, but it is known that they are crushed by the millstones of the two major parties and therefore, the probability of being elected is negligible.
Are they to blame for this grotesque image of our democracy? In this particular case, the responsibility lies with AKEL. The only left-wing party that exists in Cyprus actually betrayed its principles and chose to support a right-wing candidate who, by the way, was quick to confess, publicly, that he never voted for AKEL!
It is not right for a party to sacrifice its principles to increase its chances of coming to power. Unfortunately, this is a popular practice, not only of AKEL, but of all parties in Cyprus.
Supposedly, the choice of Mr. Mavrogiannis by AKEL was made in order to increase the chances of a solution to the Cyprus problem. This would be the case if there were even minimal prospects of negotiations on the Cyprus issue.
The late change in the rhetoric of Tatar and Erdoğan does not allow for any optimism of a solution to the Cyprus problem. Even the most ethereal citizens, who are not distinguished for their intelligence, admit that – to use a Cypriot saying – “the poulin has fallen”.
We had this bird in my palms a few times, but we tormented it. He was badly persecuted, and now he too has paid his poor last toll in the relentless time. The gold hunters and the crusaders of Christ drove the bird away. Therefore, to be realistic, the new PD is called upon to manage the de facto partition and the threatened complete Turkification and not, unfortunately, to negotiate a solution to the Cyprus problem.
Developments for the future of Cyprus are complicated by the almost simultaneous election of the PD and the new Archbishop.
I am horrified at the thought that very soon, most likely, we will have a good partnership between a conservative PD and an obscurantist Archbishop. In such a case, we will not avoid slipping into the Middle Ages. Just the other day, the Metropolitan of Pafos, who is also claiming the archbishopric post, told us that “the Archbishop should have a say on the proper course in the national issue and education”.
In the meantime, the priests will decide what is the “appropriate” course on the Cyprus issue and the priests will appoint (behind the scenes) the Minister of Education.
Here is a challenge for AKEL and for all progressive people – the irrevocable pursuit of separation of State and Church and the liberation of the Ministry of Education from the clutches of grivism and fascism.
As if this message were not terrible, another political figure is now projecting Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou as a candidate for Archbishop! Apparently to explain to our children through the Ministry of Education that homosexuality is a “problem” that parents transmit to the child when they engage in “abnormal sexual acts” and that for these abnormal acts he is to blame…
a little more the woman than the man. Mea culpa! Finally, it would be a major omission not to mention Metropolitan Athanasius who refused to meet with the Pope, because the latter is … heretic.
It is remarkable that in the interviews of the candidates for the Presidency of the CT, no journalist asked any questions about the relationship between the State and the Church.
This indicates the tolerance not only of the state but also of society to the interventions of the Church.
It is this monopolization of power by the reactionary “grid” that brought us to the brink, and threatens to bring us back to the Middle Ages, not to mention their greedy profit that had reached an extremely high paroxysm of brutality and criminality.
The Left of Cyprus (which of course is not only AKEL) should be chasing the Presidency not for the “pleasure of power”, but in order to put into practice its political and social positions. But how will this be done with its forces fragmented, as it is now, and with the conservative and ecclesiastical establishment controlling everything?
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of CypriumNews.
