Christofias just wants to be loved

The Sunday Mail's satirical column Coffeeshop says Christofias' honeymoon period is officially over. He has completed more than 100 carefree, fun-days in office, during which everyone at home and abroad laid off him, treating him with the kind of respect usually reserved for Nelson Mandela. He started his term very well, making all the right noises and moves, fooling many people into thinking he had statesmanlike qualities, a myth the international community helped promote by universally welcoming his election and heaping lavish praise on him, simply because he had defeated the Ethnarch. The unearned respect made him buy into the myth that he was a Mandela-type figure who could reunite the country with his charisma and everyone would be eternally grateful to him. It is fast becoming obvious to anyone with half a brain that he is more of a Pandela than a Mandela. Archbishop Chrys was spot-on when he dismissed comrade Pandela as a ‘veteran of populism’ two weeks ago. He was and always will be a shameless populist uttering vacuous, home-spun tales that people want to hear, avoiding tough decisions at all costs and systematically choosing the least painful option. His problem is that he wants to be loved, more than anything else, and it is not enough for him to be loved only by his hairy, bow-legged proletarian followers. He wants to be loved by everyone – the wealthy and the lumpen proles, the nationalists and the yes-voters, vegetarians and meat-eaters, environmentalists and developers. We have seen this street philosophy being implemented in his unpredictable handling of Cyprob. On the one hand he goes and agrees things with Talat that would get the process moving, but as soon as he comes under a little criticism from the hard-line Tassos disciples, he changes his mind and starts inventing differences to win them over. Not even Tassos could have come up with the comrade’s latest condition for a resumption of talks – the need for a ‘common language’ between him and Talat. This is the latest addition to the long list of absurd phrases inspired by the Cyprob on our side. Other phrases in this genre are, ‘a federation with the right content’, ‘a basis for a settlement or a basis for negotiations?’ and my all-time favourite ‘the virgin birth’. UN Undersecretary General Lyn Pascoe was not impressed with presidente Pandela’s idiotic search for a common language during this week’s visit and said so at his news conference, even though it was not picked up by our hacks because he dressed his views in diplomatic lingo. If the comrade understood what Pascoe had said, he would start demanding that the UN mediators adopted the common language as well. The fact is that Pascoe was less critical of Talat, who had turned down his dinner invitation on the grounds that he was sulking about the UN resolution, than with our enlightened leader. Meanwhile Pandela’s criticism of Talat has given the anti-settlement camp an excuse to dismiss him as just another Denktator, as it had done during the Ethnarch’s days. Come to think of it, our presidente is behaving like another Ethnarch himself. Is he a Tassos in sheep’s clothing? Or is he a sheep in Tassos’ clothing whose desire to be loved by everyone forces him to pander to the hard-liners? But if he thinks he is smart enough to solve Cyprob and keep the support of the bash-patriots, then he needs to book an appointment with Dr Mikellides.

Loucas Charalambou writing in the Sunday Mail and Politis says Christofias' desire to keep everyone happy and his irrational decision to try to walk a tightrope between the irresponsible Papadopoulos policy and the pragmatic policy for a solution will lead him to an impasse. His Wednesday statement illustrates this self-entrapment. His attempts to show that he had rid himself of the Annan plan and had remained within the spirit of the July 8 agreement between Papadopoulos and Talat, has led to him now telling us that he would like to “clearly redefine” the basis for a solution. It is crazy to think that 31 years after the Makarios-Denktash agreement, which AKEL had been repeating all these years like a daily prayer, Christofias would now try to redefine the basis for a solution. So, for the last 31 years we had been negotiating without an agreed basis for the settlement? Not even Rauf Denktash has ever come up with such a joke. Christofias’ problem is blatantly obvious. In his efforts to keep on side the leaders of EDEK and DIKO – Omirou and Garoyian respectively – he abandoned AKEL’s policy which consisted of making changes to the Annan plan. Thus he destroyed the only basis that existed and could have been used for the continuation of the negotiations. He now finds himself in the same vacuum occupied by Papadopoulos who took us 30 years back by turning politics into a word-game. In this way he pushed the Turkish side, which had been willing to discuss changes to the Annan plan, to the position it had held before it accepted the plan. If you want to go back 30 years, we will do so as well, the Turks said. And this has led us once again to the well-known, idiotic game with words and slogans, which will never solve the Cyprus problem. Meanwhile, time is running out as we only have the next 10 months to find a settlement. After that, the Turkish Cypriots will start their election campaign, Talat could lose and be replaced and partition will be formalised. If Christofias sincerely wants a settlement, there is only one path he can follow. He should give up the hazardous tightrope walking, sit down with Talat and, using the Annan plan as the basis, try to find a compromise on two basic issues – property and guarantees. Everything else is just a waste of time.

Makarios Droushiotis writing in Politis gives the background to this week’s events around the Cyprus problem. He cites well-informed sources as saying that Lyn Pascoe was furious with the recent shenanigans of the two leaders and at his meeting with the permanent five of the Security Council advised them to stay out of these tactical manoevres in which the Cypriots had become experts over the last few decades. Although he praised them both before leaving for their willingness to go for a solution and was optimistic that “this time we will succeed”, he rejected all the little accusations and counter accusations that had been given publicity in recent days. He said there was progress at the technical committees and working groups, he rejected the idea that the working groups or committees could negotiate certain important aspects of the Cyprus problem, he believes the basic priniciples for a solution can be found within the parametres of the UN, and he criticised the attempt at putting too much meaning into words. Pascoes’s very important views that he made at a news conference before leaving were practically ignored in their entirety by the media. Yet despite the opposite impression that was given, Pascoe got what he wanted out of the two leaders, namely their agreement to direct talks in the summer. Already things have been toned down with milder statements coming from Christofias. All that remains is to find a way to save face as regards the basis for a solution that they can express after their 1 July meeting. As Pascoe explained at his news conference which either the press didn’t attend or didn’t assess accurately, the basis for a solution is there, and is in the body of work that has gone before.