Ioannis Kasoulides: I’m here to listen

IT’S NOT every day that someone has the chance of asking, “Why do you want to be President?”, and it’s not every day a possible candidate responds that it’s not necessarily an ambition of theirs.

Of course, former Government Spokesman, Foreign Minister and currently an MEP from opposition DISY, Ioannis Kasoulides has not decided yet whether he will run for President in next year’s elections. At the moment, he is out and about taking the pulse of the people before he makes his final decision next month.

“I don’t consider what I am doing now as the fulfillment of an ambition. Neither do I believe this is what matters now regarding Cyprus. The big question is whether the people, the ordinary people and not the political parties, do have the will for another road that Cyprus should take, whether the time has come to change gear from the post colonial eastern Cyprus towards a more modern European state,” he said.

Kasoulides envisages a country that will have a new strategy, both regarding the national issue and a country that carries out the necessary reforms towards a modern European state.Indeed, Kasoulides possesses a modern ‘European’ outlook, but also considers himself a listener rather than a speaker. That is why he has been taking several months to sit down with the electorate to learn what they want.He strongly believes that it’s not a matter of whether he will be the ‘DISY candidate’ running against Papadopoulos for power, but a matter of what, not who, the people want as their President.

He sees the presidency a “direct contract” between the people and the person they have chosen to carry out a policy on their behalf. He also sees this as his biggest challenge.Kasoulides said the presidential system itself was about the president and the people, and not about political parties.

“If it’s a fight between three political parties on the one hand and one political party on the other, then we go away from the true presidential system and we create a confused parliamentary and presidential system, which – to my mind – is something wrong. So the challenge is to bring the presidential system back to its purity and originality,” he said.

His current consultations with the public are designed, he said, to give people the chance to speak.

“I want more to listen than speak, which will lead me to answer this question: Can I be the challenger of President Papadopoulos in the choice of another road? I want this issue to be debated in depth between myself and the citizens before coming to a conclusion.”

It is easy to say that a president should be independent of the interests of political parties and be a ‘man of the people’ but in the real world it rarely works that way, unless a country is being run by a dictator. Whether they like it or not, democratically elected presidents are also an inherent part of the political system that spawned them and more often than not get sucked back in despite their declarations about fighting the system.

Kasoulides believes it is not a matter of “fighting the system” or for a candidate to reject his party history, but he also believes a President should not have to make decisions based on the interests of a party.

“That is where we are now witnessing a wrong system of governing, where for instance a President who is elected directly by the people is admonished because he has not taken the views of the political parties regarding such and such an appointment, or when in order to reshuffle he has to get the permission of the leaders of the political parties that support him. This is wrong as far as the presidential system is concerned. Political parties should not interfere,” he said; their place was in the legislative branch.“The easy answer is to say, we will fight the system, but I’m not saying this.”

Kasoulides said his approach would be to change the system. “From talking to people, there is a great demand to change the system. What you need is the political will, and feeling that you have the mandate from the people to do it,” he added. One of the ways to start this would be reforming the public service, which is something he said he tried to do on a small scale when he was Foreign Minister.

“I worked in such a way to boost morale. By boosting morale and convincing them [public servants] that this way would bring more rewards from the public you’re serving, from society, from your ministry, your government. I think this is the way to go forward on this issue,” he said.

“I don’t think that running the government in an authoritarian way, as it happens now I’m afraid, when from the minister downwards there is a consistent fear that they will get a letter that will admonish them or they will get so frequently and so easily into a disciplinary investigation against them, is the way for the civil service to produce good results.”

Kasoulides said civil servants today were “totally scared” to take any decisions and that the entire legislation regulating the public service should be overhauled.

“I think it can be done provided it is done in a non confrontational manner but with a consensual way. I am a man of consensus. I’ve always been. It’s my character and my character is not authoritarian. I am ready to listen,” he said.

“Being willing to listen and debate is much more effective than being stubborn. I am willing also to take responsibility for decisions and not create witch hunts in order to throw it on others.”

Asked the first thing he would do if elected, Kasoulides said he would start by limiting the Cyprus issue to 50 per cent of public debate.

“I will insist on it because the debate on the national issue is squashing any debate on any other issue concerning Cyprus,” he said.

Without adequate debate on other issues, Kasoulides said politicians were floundering on reforms and taking wrong turns because they were not sure if they really had the public mandate for those changes.

“We need debate on internal issues that are very important, to talk about education, to talk about our universities, to talk about the environment, to talk about road safety, to talk about drugs. We have to talk about these things. We can’t allow them to go on automatic pilot. I want a younger government, a healthy government which will include a number of women and not just one.”

PART II

KASOULIDES may want to limit debate on the Cyprus issue but it is still likely to form a very huge part of the challenge of ousting President Tassos Papadopoulos, if both end up running for President.With the 2004 referendum on the Annan plan still fresh in the minds of Greek Cypriots and the bitter rift it caused between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters still lingering, the chances of a new battle between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps cannot be ruled out.“That’s another hurdle,” Kasoulides conceded, saying the issue might very well rear its head, “if the people doubt the results of the referendum in 2004 and they need to repeat a decision on the yes and the no”. “But it has been proved that the strategy that we have followed so far regarding the solution of the problem of Cyprus had failed,” he said.“Whether this strategy belongs to the philosophy of those that advocated a yes or those who advocated the no, we will never solve the Cyprus problem if we continue with this strategy.”Kasoulides said this was not the way forward but neither was adopting a policy of accepting limitations and compromises to the sovereignty of Cyprus to appease the other.“

That one will fail as well because the people belonging to the other philosophy will wreck both,” he said. “So what are we going to do? Are we going to remain as a partitioned Cyprus with all the risks? A lot of Cypriots say let them be over there but who are ‘they’? ‘They’ are not the Turkish Cypriots. ‘They’ is Turkey with the settlers, with the army, and I don’t think Cyprus can withstand borders with Turkey. The borders of Cyprus should be its shores.”Kasoulides said what was needed was a synthesis of the two philosophies, and a united front.

This would mean what he called an “evolutionary solution” to the Cyprus problem in two or even more stages.“We begin with the solution that is not to be sought in the depth of time, but as soon as possible, which will include all the compromises that are necessary in order to respond to all the fears and concerns of the two communities but for a limited period of time, to last as long as the mistrust between the two communities will last, and it will not last forever,” he said. “There is a mistrust that has happened over unfortunate episodes in our history. When we will work and live together this mistrust will go away at a certain period of time. I cannot specify. We will see. Five years, ten years, 15 years. I don’t know.”

Under this type of initiative, it would be agreed from the beginning that a constitutional assembly and an international conference of the guarantors would be convened to review the constitution and the treaties in order to remove from them all those elements that were initially introduced to fight the mistrust.

The second stage would respond to the aspiration of those who want a totally independent and fully sovereign Cyprus without limitations in basic freedoms.

“Let us set our mind to the future, for something that is constructive,” Kasoulides said, adding that if Turkish intransigence was then responsible for not making progress, Turkey should then bear the responsibility.

“For the last four years we have been bearing the responsibility. From the victims we have become the perpetrators and the Turkish Cypriots have become the poor isolated people,” he said.

This was particularly noticeable in Europe, where as an MEP Kasoulides spends a good deal of time.

“In my view, it’s getting worse and worse because nowadays no one is talking about the occupation of the Turkish army or the infringement of human rights of the refugees. Everyone now is talking about the so-called isolation of the Turkish Cypriots and if they talk about us they only talk about the Ankara protocol,” he said.

“We need a whole new strategy, a totally new approach. You cannot navigate with the syndrome of Cyprus under siege and this notion that everyone is conspiring against us.”To do this, he said Greek Cypriots must realise that the international community does not actually have a grudge against them because they rejected the Annan plan.

“It’s a wrong perception. What happened wrong is that the handling of the ‘no’ result was totally wrong. We based a number of negations on a negation on a negation. This is not a policy to follow and this brings us now to a very critical point where the issue of direct trade risks upgrading the illegal entity in the north.”

But Kasoulides has not forgotten the Turkish Cypriots as part of his vision for Cyprus. He said they must be wooed away from “the grip of Ankara”.“We need them to believe again in the benefits of a united Cyprus. So we need a specific policy on that but not a policy that will appear as a demarche of a last resort because we are in a difficult position.

It has to be a sincere policy,” he said. He said that although it was true that Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat had occasion to be disappointed on some issues over the past few years, he could not say he himself had no part in the distance that has been created between the two sides.

“But I strongly believe we should do what it is up to us to do, and if we do it rightly and if the other side does not respond at least we have done our duty. If we allow things to develop in a way that people consider our side is the negative one or the one seeking inertia in resolving the problem, then that period of inertia is the most dangerous period of things to deteriorate. That’s what I fear we are going through right now. If you do nothing, the risk is to make the present status quo become worse.”

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2007