WHEN PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias leaves office next February, he will do so confident that history will vindicate his decisions, despite feeling bitterness for the “harsh and unfair” criticism levelled against him in the last five years, he told Haravghi newspaper in a two-part interview.
The first part was published on Christmas Day, where Christofias bemoaned the “harsh and unfair attacks” he had to endure during his tenure.
“The class, ideological, factional and social hatred of the president was so great that it reached the point where some were calling the president a murderer,” Christofias told Haravghi.
Asked how he feels about handing over the reins of state next March, the president said he had “mixed feelings”.
“On the one hand I’m leaving with bitterness because I was subject to harsh and unfair attacks, that no other president had to endure. Some may think that with these harsh attacks they were undermining and humiliating the president. What they succeeded in doing was to undermine and humiliate the institution of the president’s office. There is nothing worse in a democracy than undermining the institutions. Unfortunately this happened continuously,” he said.
Despite facing a barrage of criticism for his handling of the economy, Christofias maintained that the government did a good job under extreme conditions.
“We were unlucky because during our presidency we had to deal with capitalism’s worst crisis. I am confident though that history will vindicate us, because we have done a lot of work and innovatively in various sectors. For this work, I am satisfied,” he said.
Asked to comment on criticism that Cyprus requested support from the European Stability Mechanism because the government failed to take adequate measures, he replied that Cyprus was forced to apply for a bailout only because of the banks’ exposure to the Greek economy.
“The whole of Europe acknowledges this, the Greek prime minister boldly said it, and yet the opposition in Cyprus insists on blaming the government for everything”.
He argued that when Cyprus was shut out of the international markets in April 2011, public debt was at 60.8 per cent and the public deficit at 5.3 per cent while the corresponding average for the Eurozone was 85.1 per cent and 6.0 per cent respectively.
When Cyprus requested a bailout, the public debt reached 74 per cent and public deficit 5.8 per cent, figures that were still favourable when compared to Europe, he said.
Christofias argued that any objective person could see that Cyprus did not request a bailout because of the country’s fiscal situation.
“If that was the reason then the markets would have closed for the majority of member states in the Eurozone long before they did for Cyprus and many countries would seek recourse to the (European stability) mechanism,” he said.
In the second part of the interview published yesterday, Christofias highlighted the “glaring contradictions” in the positions of two presidential candidates, Nicos Anastasiades and Giorgos Lillikas, on the Cyprus problem.
The outgoing president questioned how DIKO could collaborate with DISY when the latter’s candidate, Anastasiades, insists on including Turkey directly in the peace negotiations in an effort to achieve a loose, decentralised federation.
He also questioned how Anastasiades can claim to want to withdraw all proposals submitted by Christofias in the peace talks when they constitute improvements on provisions that the DISY leader had previously accepted.
In a broadside at Lillikas’ proposal to start peace negotiations from scratch, Christofias questioned how anyone could believe that the deadlock could be broken by essentially going after a unitary state solution when the opposing side refuses to accept the current model of a bicommunal, bizonal federation.
“The fatal result would be to lose our support base and lead to a final partition,” he said.
Christofias voiced his support to AKEL-backed candidate Stavros Malas, noting that he was the only candidate appealing to the Turkish Cypriots, thereby showing an understanding of how important they were to reaching a fair and functional solution.