Under the title “Fatal Leadership 1948-2021”, the politician and former government minister Clerides Leontios Ierodiakonou, returns to the history of Cyprus by analyzing in depth, through an exhaustive research, to judge the choices of all the presidents of the Republic. In his book entitled “Fatal Leadership 1948 – 2021” which was presented today to a group of journalists in Nicosia, he begins logically with Archbishop Makarios and his successors. Leontios Ierodiakonou has been dealing systematically with the Cyprus issue since the beginning of the problem. In 1975 he published the book “The Cyprus problem, a path to bankruptcy”, published by Papazisis.
His current book is not yet a historical record of the Cyprus problem. The emphasis is given elsewhere, that is, to the negotiation processes that determined the course of the Cyprus problem from the end of colonialism until today, as well as to the decisions – and the quality of the decisions – taken by the Greek Cypriot leadership, within the given circumstances. This review covers a wide range – from the first attempts to internationalize the Cyprus issue with Makarios appealing to the UN, the Anglo-Cypriot talks that followed, the consultations that preceded the declaration of independence, the pursuit of changes in the Constitution and other efforts to resolve the Cyprus issue before 1974, the Geneva talks between the first and second invasions, and the ferment that led to the conclusion of the first Makarios-Denktash summit agreement. Next, reference is made to important milestones in the post-Makarios Cypriot negotiating history, with a special focus on the Anglo-American-Canadian Plan, the De Cuellar Chain Plan, the Annan Plan, the Christofia-Talat Convergence, the route to Crans Montana, and subsequent stalled negotiations. Throughout this long negotiation story, the author identifies, with few positive exceptions, recurring patterns of problematic leadership behavior, such as making serious decisions without study and planning, making policy from the pulpit and national memorials, overprotection and overprotection. , inability to make tough but necessary decisions, as well as ambiguous political decisions, with divided thoughts and feelings, which eventually led to political and diplomatic inconsistency and unreliability. As a problem behind the problem, the author identifies the “culture of one” & # 8211; the remnant of the ethnarchy & # 8211; which has always characterized the representation of Greek Cypriots in the various negotiations, with the result that the personal weaknesses, lack of knowledge and other limitations of each leader have enormous consequences in the course of the negotiations.
Leontios Ierodiakonou, as mentioned in a presentation of the book by Dr. Alexandros Lordos, is not limited only to the diagnosis of the problem, but also proposes a correction in the form of a radical restructuring of the way of representing the Greek Cypriots in future negotiations. In particular, he proposes the establishment of a representative political institution, which will manage exclusively the national problem with full executive responsibility. Each parliamentary party could be represented in this body with votes depending on its electoral power, while the President of the Republic will preside, but with only one vote. This body will appoint the negotiator and take all the decisions to handle our national problem, but with the support of a team of expert and credible scholars, to ensure that decisions by the political leadership will be made in the context of proper information so for the consequences at the time of the decision as well as for future policy implications.
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