Plenty of people were asking yesterday, most of them half in jest, what Averof Neofytou will do if the Cyprus problem actually moves. The word these days is that something is about to shift, something that would blow apart his pledge to run for president if not a leaf stirred on the Cyprus problem.
His exact words: “If, God forbid, the weekend brings nothing but doom, gloom and deadlock, and not a leaf stirs, Averof will be a candidate.” But he said that on 23 September, and it was never going to hold for ever. Not a leaf stirred then. Now the leaves can whirl into a tornado for all the difference it makes. The decision has been made.
The real story is how our party gatekeepers have managed, a year and a half before the presidential election, to get everyone obsessing about it. There is some movement now, and it could lead somewhere (could, mind you), yet everyone is still glued to the presidential race. We should be fixed on the Cyprus problem and where it might go, alert enough to grab whatever opportunity comes along or to brace for whatever danger. Instead, our first thought is: what will Averof do? That is how thoroughly the party bosses have got us hooked.
Has anyone noticed that in public debate the Cyprus problem has been reduced to a parenthesis? Quite literally. They mumble half a sentence (the usual hot air about how “we must not miss the opportunity” and “the Cyprus problem is our priority”, that sort of thing), then it’s straight back to the juicy stuff: the likely candidates, the backroom manoeuvring, the alliances in the making. Even the President, who is handling the Cyprus problem and insists it is far too early to talk about the presidential election and that he has not decided whether to run in 2028, is churning out announcements at an ever faster clip. He hasn’t launched an election campaign as a candidate. He has launched a campaign (not an election campaign, naturally?) as President.
The two big parties, meanwhile, have thrown themselves into the race, even if neither has officially fired the starting gun: DISY with its internal elections and everything before them that rattled its faithful, AKEL with its hunt for an “electable candidate” who will be legally watertight against Christodoulides. And against Anastasiades too, no doubt.
Now there is talk of a package of confidence-building measures to be agreed, which means opening crossing points. Who is going to look at that without weighing it on the electoral scales? Take Kokkina. The Greek Cypriot side wanted a crossing there, so that the people of Tillyria could at long last have a way through after sixty-odd years of isolation. Then, out of nowhere, the package offers a Kambos-Karavostasi crossing instead. By what logic this is meant to stand in for the Kokkina demand is anyone’s guess. Where exactly would anyone set out from to reach Karavostasi by way of Kambos? Nowhere.
But who cares? Perhaps Averof, who hails from those parts, could explain it to us? Then again, if movement is an end in itself, however pointless, no explanation is needed. It’s all inexplicable anyway.
PS. The old Cypriot saying “another one for Karavostasi” fell out of use after the invasion, because Karavostasi, near Xeros (pictured: the jetty), now lies in the occupied north. I asked AI what it meant and it came out with some barmy stuff. It is “used figuratively”, it told me, “to suggest that someone has lost their mind, is behaving madly or bizarrely, or that a situation has spun completely out of control into utter chaos” (…) “It is the Cypriot equivalent of the mainland Greek ‘We’re all off to Dafni!’ or ‘Lock us all up!’” Can that be right? Not a chance.
