EDITORIAL: TIME FOR OUR DEPUTIES TO RETURN TO WORK

Cyprus Mail
March 5 2008
Cyprus

IT SEEMS it will take our society quite a long time to get over the
election hangover, which is dragging on even after the investiture of
the new president. The saga of which party would take what ministry
and which individuals would be appointed gave way to the saga of who
would be elected House Speaker. This will thankfully be resolved by
tomorrow and perhaps then, life can return to normality, and we will
stop hearing about the alleged split in DIKO, which has been playing
without respite since the weekend.

Part of the problem is the big break taken by the House of
Representatives for the elections. Deputies have been on holiday
since December on the grounds that there were presidential elections –
no committee has met, no bill approved and no meeting of the plenum
has been held apart from the extraordinary one last Thursday for
the newly-elected president’s acceptance speech. The legislature is
expected to resume normal business next week, as tomorrow four new
deputies will be sworn in and the new speaker elected.

The logic of closing down the legislature for so long, we suspect, is
so that it would not be used as a platform for electioneering. Then
again, it has always been used as a platform on which parties try
to gain an electoral advantage, so why are they barred from doing so
during presidential elections? Closing the shop for three months is
just too long, considering that it will be in recess for three months
in the summer as well.

In short, this year, deputies will have worked for about six months
(if we take into account the Easter break as well) for a full year’s
remuneration. Even public teachers put in more hours per year than
the representatives of the people.

Ignoring the bigots

ARMENIAN representative Varkes Mahdessian was quite right to issue a
statement protesting about the thinly-veiled prejudice displayed by
certain sectors of our society against DIKO leader Marios Karoyian.

Ever since it became known that Karoyian was the favourite to take
over as Speaker of House, there have been digs by rivals about his
Armenian origin.

These digs were put across as legal concerns. The Constitution
made it quite clear that the Speaker of the House and President
of the Republic should be a member of the Greek community, his
detractors would say. It would be unconstitutional for an Armenian
to be acting-president of the Republic when Demetris Christofias was
abroad, the argument went. Former Attorney-general Alecos Markides
put an end to all this nonsense, explaining that, constitutionally
Armenians were also members of the Greek Cypriot community.

Karoyian’s origins were also used against him during the DIKO
leadership contest, but this did not prevent him winning. Tomorrow,
he will probably be elected Speaker of the House, which shows that
Cyprus society is moving forward. There will always be a few bigots
trying to use a person’s origin against him, but it is good to see
that for most Greek Cypriots this is not an issue.