by Marios1 » Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:10 am
I will probably vote "no" except if politicians convince me for the opposite until the referendum day.
The plan is worst than the current situation, and I would dare to say worst than agreeing to have 2 separate countries. Why? For these reasons:
1)We give part of Cyprus to Turkey. Sure, the plan prohibits any of the 2 states to break away, but why do we think that Turks will respect their signature this time? They have already proved that are not very trustworthy. And if they break away, who will stop them? UN and the big powers proved that they are not willing to do such thing. So after a couple of years, Turks will create some problems and then they will decide that they can not live with as and break away. This time it will not be one country invading another. It will be a state that decided to leave from the federation, and Turks will finally manage to have what they always wanted. If Russian federation has so huge troubles to keep Chechnya as part of their federation, if Spain has such a problem keeping the Basques, what make us think that we will manage to keep the Turks if they decide to leave?? Therefore this solution is no better than 2 separate states, but is even worst than that because of the next reasons:
2) Turks will be able to veto almost everything, and the central government will not be able to function correctly.
3)Turks will try to create problems (so they will get the excuse that they want) and we will have much less security than now, maybe even a war at some point.
4)We will have to pay higher taxes to help the Turkish settlers to achieve high standards of living.
The good parts of Annan's plan are the following: We get some land back, some refugees will be able to go to their homes, the rest will get a refund for the land that they lost, we will not have big problems to enter the EU. Nothing else!!.
Our politicians that until a few days ago kept saying that we will accept nothing less of all refuges going to their homes, all settlers to leave, all Turkish troops to leave etc etc, now decided that those things can not be achieved and that they were just giving as crap to get our votes all these years. If this is the case then why not just accept 2 separate countries? This way we will probably manage to get some more land back than Annan's plan, more refugees will go back (in reality, and not just on paper) Turks will get what they want and they will stop creating problems, we will get all the EU money to develop our country and they will became the nice poor Islamic undemocratic little country that they always wanted. They will live good and we will live way better.