Rejectionists are seeking the very state they once sought to destroy

Loucas Charalambous

SPEAKING at the opening of the overseas Cypriots’ conference on Tuesday evening, President Anastasiades said many truths and lashed out against the populism of the opposition parties.

He also launched an attack on some he did not name saying: “Do we want the Cyprus Republic? Of course we want it. But the Cyprus Republic is based on the constitution of 1960. There are some that are proposing we scrap the treaties of 1960, but it is then that we would abolish the Cyprus Republic. The constitution of 1960 gives rights to all legal residents.”

I think Anastasiades may have confused things. Who was he referring to? Today there is nobody that would not want a return to the treaties of 1960. The joke is that some are proposing exactly this – the return to these treaties and in effect the unitary state. But this now is just a dream.

An even bigger joke is that the politicians demanding this are those posing as the heirs and upholders of the ‘struggle’ of those who in 1963, in their misguided attempt to abolish the treaties, managed to do away with the state. Who brought the Cyprus Republic to an end? Makarios, Papadopoulos, Yiorkadjis, Kyprianou, Lyssarides etc. Tassos was the man who drafted the notorious ‘Akritas Plan’.

Today’s politicians that admire the above-mentioned and have become the custodians of their legacy are Papadopoulos’ son, Lillikas, Omirou and Sizopoulos, the leaders who reject a federal settlement and want a return to the 1960 state; the state whose demise was ensured by their political idols.

This is why I think the president somehow confused things. If he had wanted to address the rejectionist politicians I mentioned he should have told them something completely different – that they, the descendants and cheerleaders of Makarios and his accomplices, had no right to say they did not accept federation nor to demand a return to the Republic of 1960, which they had dissolved.

Makarios himself admitted in the most impressive way this political crime in a letter he sent to Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou on March 1 1964, just three months after the state had collapsed in ruins thanks to his brinkmanship.

He wrote:

“Our purpose, Mr President, is the abolition of the Zurich-London agreements, in order that the Greek Cypriot people, in consultation with our mother country, would be able, independently, to decide their future. I signed these agreements on behalf of the Greeks of Cyprus. In my personal opinion, under the prevailing conditions, there was no other option. But never for a moment did I believe the agreements would constitute a permanent regime.

“Since then, internationally and domestically, conditions changed and I think the time has come to attempt getting rid of the imposed treaties. The unilateral abolition of the treaties, without following the lawful procedure or the agreement of all the signatories, could possibly have serious consequences. But we will not undertake this action without prior consultation with the government of Greece.”

Yet when he wrote this, 70 days had already passed from the time the crafty priest had dissolved the state in order to free himself from the supposedly “imposed treaties”. Not only had he not consulted the Greek government, but went ahead, knowing that Greece was strongly opposed to such a move.

And while for the next 10 years Makarios and his associates were proclaiming to the world that that the treaties of 1960 were no longer valid, because they had abolished them with the tragicomic Akritas plan, today we have his political heirs and upholders of his legacy demanding, 50 years later , a return to the state he had dissolved.

Such is their political stupidity that they are incapable of understanding that conditions in 2015 have no relation to those of 1960 and that in politics, the cost of mistakes and bad judgment sooner or later has to be paid. (Cyprus Mail, 30.08.2015)