Our View: President decries blame game, but continues to play it
The brief opinion piece by Maria Angela Holguin, the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy, did not go down well with President Nikos Christodoulides, who saw it as an opportunity to engage in the blame game that he insists his government was not interested in playing.
Holguin’s big mistake was that she argued in her article that “the leaders need time for ideas to ferment and for their respective formal processes to unfold.” She had cited the presidency of the EU council and May’s parliamentary elections as delaying factors for the Greek Cypriot side while for the other side time was needed for the consolidation of the new leadership. She urged both leaders to carry on meeting “and to explore ideas and viable pathways to restart a more formal negotiations process, in the best possible way, beginning in July.”
Asked to comment, Christodoulides, more interested in winning publicity points, declared that “I am ready even in the coming week to meet in a broad conference, as we had promised the UNSG in New York and to announce the resumption of talks from where they stopped in Crans Montana.” Insisting that the EU council presidency and the May elections were not obstacles, he engaged in the blame game, saying that “if there is the will from the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot side, we can proceed.” The conclusion he led us to was that talks were not proceeding because the “will” did not exist in the other side.
These crude mind games, in which the president constantly indulges, suggest a lack of seriousness on his part or, to be more precise, a lack of interest in a new process. The UNSG’s personal envoy, who has been talking to both sides, expressed the view that more talks between the two leaders could help find a way to restart negotiations, but for Christodoulides this is not good enough because he is ready for a broad conference with the UNSG in the coming week, regardless of the fact the chances of success at such a gathering are zero. Considering the leaders have not even agreed on the confidence-building measures, the UNSG proposed at the last broad conference that another conference is guaranteed to end in failure.
Holguin knows this and so does Christodoulides, but the latter is only interested in winning the blame game and making political capital out of the ongoing stalemate. The president got his negotiator Menelaos Menelaou to engage more openly in the blame game and declare a Greek Cypriot victory. “Our evaluation of the situation is that the obstacles are owed to the stance we are facing from the Turkish side and we do not say this because it suits us or because we are interested in the blame game, but because this is the objective reality based on the facts,” said Menelaou.
This is a perfect illustration of the government’s insincerity. It insists it is not interested in the blame game, but it engages in nothing other than a blame game.