Cyprus-Forum.com

[Kikapu]

Sorry..You are right! Bad Halil...Bad!

Yeh, give him hell Zan.

[zan]

I'll get him tomorrow..Right now I must get some sleep...gnight mate!

[Kikapu]

Kikapu my dear...am I blind or drunk? I saw your post about EOKA and TMT...Makrios British etc...so it is a political discussion or I didnt get that right? If you find it hard to find it just look above.

I was only answering back to Zan, which is the polite thing to do, when asked a question, unlike some members never respond.

Anything else on the subject Lena, I'm taking the 5th, which is the rights given to each individual in the American Constitution, the 5th Amendment, a protection from self incrimination by refusing to talk.

Blind and Drunk can be a very deadly combination, specially if you choose to drive.

[Kikapu]

I'll get him tomorrow..Right now I must get some sleep...gnight mate!

Take care Zan.

[LENA]

Kikapu my dear...am I blind or drunk? I saw your post about EOKA and TMT...Makrios British etc...so it is a political discussion or I didnt get that right? If you find it hard to find it just look above.

I was only answering back to Zan, which is the polite thing to do, when asked a question, unlike some members never respond.

Anything else on the subject Lena, I'm taking the 5th, which is the rights given to each individual in the American Constitution, the 5th Amendment, a protection from self incrimination by refusing to talk.

Blind and Drunk can be a very deadly combination, specially if you choose to drive.

LOL Kikapu...I like your mood my dear.

Thanks for making me laugh and of course for stop this political conversation

By the way I am not either blind or drunk so you can sleep in peace now.

[DT.]

Thanks for the thought, Kikapu, but I have to disappoint you. Although I've spent most of my life in Switzerland, I'm not actually Swiss, I'm British. I confess, though, that I think much more like a Swiss than like a Brit. And we are having raclette tonight on our patio, washed down with a bottle of fendant (a dry white wine from the Canton of Valais) and my wife has a few Swiss decorations up (inside, as we are discreet enough not to show any national symbols in a different country). As you may guess from our menu, compared to yours, we lived the other side of the Roestigraben in Welschschweiz. To be more precise, in the Canton of Vaud, in a village outside Lausanne, where I had a small enterprise.

I agree with you about the melding of 6 ethnic groups with 4 languages and 2 religions into a harmonic whole. I believe the secret is the upside-down political system where the commune (municipality) is more politically important than the canton and the canton is more important than the national government. This decentralises all the important decisions as much as possible. The federal government deals only with things like the army, customs, the money, foreign affairs and communications, things of national interest. This combined with direct democracy at all three levels, with the power of referendum and popular initiatives in the hands of relatively small numbers of citizens. Possibly one of the most important brakes is that the Federal Presidency is held for a non-re-eligible single year and is really just a nominative post, the main task of whom is receiving the letters of credence of new ambassadors. The President also holds the chair of the Executive, a seven-member Federal Council, which is elected by the combined upper and lower houses of Parliament, divided among the major political parties. This year, the President is a Socialist from Geneva, a Madame Micheline Calmy-Rey and, today, she will give her 1st August speech from the Gruetli, an inaccessible prairie where the three original leaders swore their alliance in 1291. This is controversial because recent presidential speeches there have been interrupted by young far-right elements and the government has no longer supported the tradition. However, the President insisted on maintaining the tradition and the funding has come from industry with a strongly policed exclusion of the neo-nazis and skin-heads.

I have often wondered how the Swiss governmental model could be applied to this island and I'm convinced it could be successful, but not as bizonal federation. The Swiss acceptance of ethnic groups is not achieved so much by separation but by fusion. I would not divide the island into TC and GC. I would form "cantons" from the existing Districts. It doesn't matter that some of them, such as Nicosia and Famagusta, will be mixed, in the same way that the Canton of Berne has mostly Protestant German speakers and a large minority of Catholic French-speakers. Why? Because the most important decisions are decentralised to the villages, so each ethnicity will be essentially self-governing and the referendum is the brake that prevents excesses. In the bilingual Districts, you will find the true fusion, far away from the political one-upmanship that the present and past governments have exhibited.

Of course, this will never happen because the current power-holders are so drunk with their importance that they would not want to see their power disappear into thin air, as a village Mukhtar would become more than his equal (the Swiss President and Ministers are so unimportant that there is no cult of the personality and they are as likely to go to work in a tram, without bodyguards, as the local plumber. I've been in an ordinary restaurant when a President walked in with a couple of friends, just as any ordinary citizen would.)

Dreams of a Cypriot Utopia!

What village outside Lausanne Devil? I was in Ouchy.

[devil]

Romanel-sur-Lausanne. a TGV (train de Gros-de-Vaud!) ride from Bel-Air!

The raclette was excellent!

Once again, I was disappointed to see how this thread turned into Cypriot partisan politics. I wonder what the average IQ is of those who cannot let such an opportunity pass without spoiling a thread!