Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

Well, GR above has given the party electoral proportions, AKEL the biggest party hardly ever exceeds 30 per cent, for instance. So TC parties would come in as bolsters enabling one or other GC party to obtain power. It is a development we see in Bulgaria and increasingly in northern Greece in local politics.

Being brushed aside is not easy if anyone party wants to gain power and politicians live for power, it is their goal in life.

If in addition to that you add BBF where each community is autonomous in its own region it is obvious that at the national federal level the TCs would be the ones calling the shots. But like I said above, that is not going to happen for obvious reasons. Each side is too deeply entrenched in the current thought proccess and has too much invested in a version of BBF which relies on other, more complicated and possibly less reliable ways to share power.

The idea does have it funny side too. I would love to see Nikos Anastassiades addressing a political rally of TCs.

[repulsewarrior]

...oh yes that is democracy; minorities have their influence by holding the balance of power.

any split within a mono clonal society will be decided by the "others".
...as in the case with physics, nothing is black and white; here too

grey plays a role as well...

[Kikapu]

Perhaps that as you agree the 13 point change was needed to make the 1960 Zurich agreement work then you should also accept that the two states are needed for the same purpose....

That's what I have been proposing, Zan, a Democratic system and BBF under True Federation with Federated states of north and south.!

Whats wrong with my proposal? one man one vote is totally democratic and does not infringe on anyones rights.

I don't know, VP, because you have ONLY given us very few details, but from what I gathered in what you wrote in few paragraphs, is that the TCs will vote for the TCs and the GCs will vote for the GCs no matter where they live to elect the representatives, but the GCs can only vote for representatives for the south state and the TCs can only vote for representatives for the north state.. It may be "one man one vote", but you are still violating ones democratic and Human Rights by denying them to vote for representatives in the areas they live and pay taxes. Hardly the norm for one nation under one citizenship in a democratic 27 EU nations and the west in general. Lets just say GCs living in the north state who pay taxes for the local and state government will not have any say so in how the local and state government is run that may effect their day to day lives as the citizens of the north state. This is generally known as "Taxation without Representation". This is what brought on the famous "Boston Tea Party" protest by the new Americans over the British in 1773 at the Boston Harbour, because Britain were taxing the Americans and yet the Americans had no representation in the British Government. It was a one way sweet deal for the British.

I also don't know how you reached the 75 GC representatives and 35 TC representatives. I guess you gave 70 GCs and 30 TCs for the Lower House and 5 and 5 each for the Upper House. Well, for the lower house the ratio between the two is almost 2:1 in favour of the GCs when they are in fact 4:1 ratio based from the 1960 figures, even though it is much higher right now. The upper house is agreed with the 5-5 which is what the upper house will be 50% representation from each state, but I must once again state, that those 5 seats in the upper house will belong to the state and not to any one community. Then you go off the rails with your undemocratic ways of running the lower house by allocating 50% power for the GCs and the TCs in passing bills in the lower house by requiring (I assume from what you wrote) that 50% of the 70 GCs will need to say YES as well as 50% of the 30TCs saying YES also. Once again you are allocating power to the two communities to be the guardians of the Federal Government and the country and if one of the two communities decides to walk off the government to seek independence with the established state lines of north and south states, then the whole system will collapse by bringing a Constitutional crises much like 1963. You cannot run a country based on 50% approval from each community in the government, specially when the ratio of the communities "selected" by the people of each ethnic groups, and that one of the communities to be the guardian of the country are at 4:1 ratio (GCs) to the other (TCs).

Your Upper House idea is also non democratic to say the least from what I understood of your proposal. If we are going to have all these undemocratic way of running the country, why go through the motion of all this democratic nonsense and not just put Talat and Christofias in charge like dictators to make all the decisions for us. It will be the same thing, right. 50-50 representation of the GCs and the TCs and lets save a lot of money to the tax payers by not having to hold any elections or even have two states under BBF. What for, when they can just appoint whom ever they want to represent the GCs and the TCs. Why waste time and energy by pretending that we are a democratic country in what you are proposing. One man one vote is just the individual right that every citizen is entitled to, but then you go on by destroying the whole essence of Democracy and Human Rights by not practicing Democracy and Human Rights and instead use a policy of "community rights" to run the country. Now, we can do that if you want, but then we must also make other Cypriot communities an equal partner, otherwise you are making the TCs and GCs as the only communities in Cyprus, which is not the case and which is also not fair as well as being a Racist policy towards the Armenians and the Maronites.!


I appologise if I mis read your proposal which brough on the above argument. If I got it wrong, perhaps you can write out your proposal in detail for us to see.!

You are mixing the 2 issues of local representation and federal level and playing with numbers to provide empty counter arguements.

If the whole of a united Cyprus vote for the candidate of their choice irrelevent of GC or TC....is this democratic? One man one vote.

The first past the post is also democratic the first number of GCs and TCs past the post represent us in the 2 houses.

This type of a system will not be open to manipulation by the majority as they know exactly the number of reps they can get into government so that would mean parties will have to field candidates from both the north and south to try and get as many elected as possible to win government.

This is the basic idea, I think you are devious enough to make this work only if you wanted, it make need a few tweeks here and there but in principles it can work and best of all we will steer clear of the dangers you want to push us into with your plan.

I really don't have too much time to get into your post now and in fact, I will have very little time in the next several weeks except for a quick "pit stop" into the forum now and then, but your version of One man, one Vote as you have presented in your post, the only positive I can see was the fact that everyone was allowed to vote. Well, that is part of democracy, so I think we are making progress with you, but that's as far as it went. Everything else you wrote were totally undemocratic, because even though you are saying One man, one Vote, in reality you were not putting it into practice, because following One Man One Vote, come the MAJORITY RULE which you did not allow for, but instead you have turned the minority vote to count as equal to the vote of the majority in the lower house by requiring 50-50 from both sides to pass a bill, despite you giving disproportionate representatives for the size of the population between the GCs and the TCs, unless of course you had counted all 180,000 GC refugees to be permanent residents of the north state along with the adjusted 150,000 TCs (including settlers as citizens), then your figures of 70GC and 30TC lower house representatives would make sense. Is that what you meant, VP.?

So what you are saying is, that the GCs living in the north can vote for local and state seats but not for Federal. How can you have such a discriminatory system. That would mean that the GCs will not have anyone representing them in the Federal level from the north state. They live in the north state, but they are asked to vote for someone from the south state, or I guess they can also vote for a TC representative from the north state running for office, but a GC person living and paying taxes in the north will not be allowed to run for office in the Federal level, and you ask what's wrong with your plan.? Where does one begin to show you the problems is more the question really, because it is full of Democratic and Human Rights violations for starters. But just for the sake of argument, if you don't want to return any GC land back and all 180,000 GCs are then force to live in the north state, they will end up running that state from Governorship down, and as I've told you many times, that 99% of all the laws that govern the people of that state are created by the state itself and not at the Federal level, so even though your plan is riddled with Democratic and Human Rights violation, the TCs will be the biggest losers if you think you can keep all of the GC land, just because you would have 50-50 power in the lower house and the already given 50-50 power at the upper house, despite your idea of needing 3 out of 5 members from each side to say YES to a bill.

I don't want to sound too critical of your plan, but in laymen terms, it SUCKS big time and will never be accepted, and you know how I know that, it's because the Annan Plan had something like that, and the GCs already said NO to it. You are not going to get any support from the GCs as long as it is a undemocratic and violations of Human Rights plan, including this TC, me. Not today, being part of the EU. I have given you a perfect plan where you will have everything you have asked for, and even more lately if a little derogation is allowed which I believe it can be gotten that would make the north a majority always with hardly any threat of losing any seats to the GCs in the upper house and hardly any in the state and local seats, if you were to return most of their land back. This will not only leave the north almost exclusively a TC state, but it will also cost very little to achieve it, since you will not need to compensate the GC land owners with the money you don’t have to begin with. Cyprus being in the EU, you cannot peddle undemocratic and Human Rights violations any longer as the case was with the Annan Plan. Your system would be very tempting to divide the island by the radicals from both sides by creating a constitutional crises if half of the government were to withdraw, since two of the communities basically would "own" half the government and the constitution would be designed around those two communities despite their differenced in their size.

All in all, your plan is really a NO plan other than once again trying to go back to the 1960's agreements that had failed in 1963. Your plan would not produce any better results, even if it were allowed to be put forward. No VP, it is time to use the BBF as my plan gave to build a democratic society in Cyprus. Just how long do you want the TCs to live in a undemocratic systems, just because their numbers are less than the GCs.? In Switzerland with the four communities ranging from 69%, 20%, 10% and 1% with four different languages have managed to make it work without even having equal representatives in the lower house but almost equal representatives in the upper house of two members from each 20 full Cantons and only 1 representative from each 6 half Cantons, and no one sees themselves as being the majority or a minority. But of course, they do use a political ideology to run the country and not ethnicity. Same should be tried in Cyprus perhaps, because we already know that your way does not and it did not work. It has been tried ans it has failoed. "Been there, Done that", it is time to move forward with the times and no matter how much you want to resist, there can be no peace and settlement unless Democracy, Human Rights, International Laws and EU Principles are observed.!

[zan]

...oh yes that is democracy; minorities have their influence by holding the balance of power.

any split within a mono clonal society will be decided by the "others".
...as in the case with physics, nothing is black and white; here too

grey plays a role as well...

Why did you not fight tooth and nail when offered this inequality when joining the EU......We are too few we could have said.....We are not worthy...This is not democracy you mad bastards.....

[askimwos]

As a food for thought...
Here are the current proposals at the negotiation table regarding the political system of the Federated Cyprus:


The GC side's proposals for the political system:

Two federal states - each having their local parliamnet which votes for their laws which have to be within the framework of the Federal state constitution and the EU principles and Human Rights. At the local state parliamentary elections all residents of the state have the right to vote and be voted regardless of ethnicity. States are responslible for education, health, policing at state level, transport within their boundaries, local taxation, and more or less everything except defence, customs, international transport, natural resources, and foreign policy.

At federal level:

a. Rotating Presidency (ratio 2 to 1) - president and vice-president voted directly from the people. Both GCs and TCs have the right to vote for both president and vice-president with the vote being weighted so that each each community affects the other community's decision by 30%. This in essense safeguards against hardlines/racists and militant people getting elected.

b. Lower house - (ratio 75-25 prepared to negotiate 70-30) - decisions based on majority.

c. Upper House - ratio 50-50 - decisions based on majority

The GC side is prepared to negotiate the scenario where the elections for the Lower and Upper House are held based on ethnicity rather than residency if enough land is returned under the GC federal state. This would include Famagusta, Morfou, part of Karpasia and some big villages in Mesaoria so that the number of refugees that would return under the GC federal state is maximised. It is estimate that if those areas are returned, around 100, 000 out of the 160,000 refugees will be under GC administration, leaving around 60,000 to decide whether they want to move under TC administration.

The TC proposals are:

Rotating presidency or ministirial council elected by Upper House using different ballots. ratio (1:1 or 3:2)

Upper House: 50-50

Lower House: 50-50 or 70:30 but with different majorities to pass a bill

GC residents at local level have no voting rights in TC state and their numbers is restricted at a certain percentage. The same goes for property ownership.

[insan]

As a food for thought...
Here are the current proposals at the negotiation table regarding the political system of the Federated Cyprus:


The GC side's proposals for the political system:

Two federal states - each having their local parliamnet which votes for their laws which have to be within the framework of the Federal state constitution and the EU principles and Human Rights. At the local state parliamentary elections all residents of the state have the right to vote and be voted regardless of ethnicity. States are responslible for education, health, policing at state level, transport within their boundaries, local taxation, and more or less everything except defence, customs, international transport, natural resources, and foreign policy.

At federal level:

a. Rotating Presidency (ratio 2 to 1) - president and vice-president voted directly from the people. Both GCs and TCs have the right to vote for both president and vice-president with the vote being weighted so that each each community affects the other community's decision by 30%. This in essense safeguards against hardlines/racists and militant people getting elected.

b. Lower house - (ratio 75-25 prepared to negotiate 70-30) - decisions based on majority.

c. Upper House - ratio 50-50 - decisions based on majority

The GC side is prepared to negotiate the scenario where the elections for the Lower and Upper House are held based on ethnicity rather than residency if enough land is returned under the GC federal state. This would include Famagusta, Morfou, part of Karpasia and some big villages in Mesaoria so that the number of refugees that would return under the GC federal state is maximised. It is estimate that if those areas are returned, around 100, 000 out of the 160,000 refugees will be under GC administration, leaving around 60,000 to decide whether they want to move under TC administration.

The TC proposals are:

Rotating presidency or ministirial council elected by Upper House using different ballots. ratio (1:1 or 3:2)

Upper House: 50-50

Lower House: 50-50 or 70:30 but with different majorities to pass a bill

GC residents at local level have no voting rights in TC state and their numbers is restricted at a certain percentage. The same goes for property ownership.

GC residents(citizens) of TC constituent state must be granted political rights at local level when their proportion reaches 1/4+ of TC residents(citizens) of TC constituent state.(Something like Governor's Council) They should be granted "politically equal status" exactly with the same political mentality how 2 ethnic groups should have "politically equal status" at federal level.

The number of GC residents(citizen or non citizen) of TC constituent state and right to property of any Cypriot should not be restricted. It should be discussed by lower senate or "governor's Council and if necessary by upper senate on case by case basis with taking into account the socio-political and economical stability of TC constituent state; thus stability of Federal state of Cyprus.

[insan]

It seems all Greeks of forum either voted as GCs or Turks.