Saturday, February 2, 2008
‘When you cast your vote remember the dove whose feathers we have clipped’
Nicos A. ROLANDIS
Former Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister
Cyprus has been the classic case of a country whose leadership, with some exceptions, was not characterized in recent years by political acumen. Our big “feat” in the past six decades was to break Cyprus up into two parts. I recall what Constantinos Karamanlis, then prime minister of Greece, told us in 1978, with a lot of bitterness, at his plain apartment on Herodes Atticus street in Athens: “The Greek Cypriots started a struggle in 1955 for the union of Cyprus with Greece, while the Turks were fighting at the same time for partition. It appears that at the end of the day the Turks will achieve their objective.” Wise words thrown into the vacuum of the irresponsibility that surrounds us.
The dove and the branch of the olive tree have been our emblems since 1960. Still, prior to the elevation of the dove to the pinnacle of our statehood, we started clipping its feathers. The mere recording of the proposals we had over the years for the solution to our problem and the negative outcomes (we rejected all of them) causes sheer awe. I set out the various instances with no comment.
Peace moves rejected by Greek Cypriots
1) 1948: Consultative Assembly: We rejected it.
2) 1955-56: Harding proposals: We rejected them.
3) 1956: Ratcliffe Constitution: We rejected it.
4) 1958: Macmillan Plan: We rejected it.
5) 1959-60: Zurich-London Agreements: We rejected them in 1963 (through the efforts to amend the Constitution) although we initially accepted them.
6) 1964: Acheson Plan: We rejected it.
7) 1972: Agreement of Clerides-Denktaş: We rejected it.
1975: Bicommunal Arrangement: We rejected it.
9) 1978: Anglo-American Canadian Plan: We rejected it.
10) 1981: Evaluation of Waldheim: We rejected it.
11) 1983: Indicators of Perez de Cuellar: We rejected them.
12) 1985-86: Consolidated Documents of Perez de Cuellar: We rejected them.
13) 1992: Set of Ideas, Boutros Boutros-Ghali: We rejected them in 1993.
14) 1997: Kofi Annan's proposals at Troutbeck-Glion: They could not go through.
15) 2002-2004: Annan Plan: We rejected it.
I do not record the stance of the Turkish side. What matters is our position, because we have been the weak link in this game. We have been the party in need of recovering lost territories, lost dreams, lost hopes. We should therefore possess more acumen and more courage in order to avoid partition.
I do not allege that the above initiatives were good. In the circumstances prevailing in Cyprus, the “good” and the “very good” are utopian. Cyprus and Hellenism never had the way to fight off the various interests which are sprawling in the area. To this weakness of ours we have added our blunders, our omissions and our sins and we created a chaotic imbroglio. Even Greece has opted to stay away. She simply gradually builds her relations with Turkey in all sectors. For those who can read between the lines, Greece's message to us is, “Once you are not interested in a solution, why should we bother.”
Tassos the intransigent
All the above initiatives were rejected by Tassos Papadopoulos with the exception of the Consultative Assembly, which he could not “slaughter” because at that time he was a young student at the Gymnasium. Tassos was one of those who had rejected the Zurich-London Agreements in 1960 as well, according to his own confession. He also admitted that 45 years later, in the year 2005, he realized that those agreements constituted a good solution! But in 1963, together with others he dealt a coup de grace on the agreements. The feathers of the dove were clipped at that time. The branch of the olive tree fell to the ground. Peace evaporated and Cyprus went down on her knees. And I have no doubt that if humans had an unusual longevity, Tassos, in the slow way in which he apparently reacts, would have realized in the year 2050 that the Annan Plan might be, after all, an acceptable solution.
I saw Mr. Papadopoulos the other day on television stating he wants a solution. “But the question is what such a solution will be,” he concluded. However, the question is not “what such a solution will be,” the question is whether 60 years after 1948, after we rejected all the opportunities offered to us and in the wake of the disastrous handling of our problem in the past five years, Mr. Papadopoulos anticipates that the skies will open up and that the ideal solution will emerge, acceptable to all of us, including the Turkish Cypriots and Ankara, so that Papadopoulos and the archbishop will manage to go to Kyrenia next year and throw the holy cross into the waters of the harbor, as they told us recently.
Has Tassos been to Kyrenia? Has he visited the territories of the north? Has he ever witnessed what is happening there? Has he seen the thousands of shops, the places of business, the houses, the hotels, the large and small installations, which all bear the Turkish stamp? He has not been there. Because if he had been there he should tell us how he proposes to demolish the “Constantinoupolis” and the “Smyrni” we have created in the north, through our stupidity of the past 60 years, for which he bears a lot of responsibility. Had he been there he would have shed many tears. Not like last time during his television appearance. He would cry privately, in silence …
When you cast your vote in a few days, dear fellow countryman, think very cautiously what sort of future you determine for Cyprus. All of us who believed in the past in the Liberal Party and its credos will vote for Kasoulides. He is a correct, honest, affable, modest person of absolute integrity. He has very good access to Europe and to the international community. He has full knowledge of the predicament of Cyprus today and he will take corrective measures.
Warning from Clerides
I shall add nothing more. I shall simply remind you of what the political patriarch of Cyprus, Glafcos Clerides, wrote on the last page (383) of his recent book “Documents of an Era.”
“The postponement of the solution of the Cyprus problem to the remote future will have only one consequence: The recognition of the legal entity of the de facto regime, even without any sovereignty, so that its isolation will be lifted. In such a case the fruitless lapse of time will lead to the solution which Denktas and Turkey were unsuccessfully targeting for 33 years, namely, the partition of Cyprus into two sovereign states.”
