Our View: There is more to a president’s legacy than infrastructure

For the last few months President Anastasiades has been engaging in frenzied legacy-building. He has visited every district, laying foundation stones, cutting ribbons, visiting projects in progress, constantly telling people that it was his government that did all these great things for Nicosia, Limassol, Paphos, Larnaca and Famagusta. His government, it is fair to say, has completed many infrastructure projects, introduced Gesy and the minimum guaranteed income among other things, but going round the country praising his achievements was not very presidential.

Few will remember the infrastructure projects, which are what people expect from their government, but they will remember the golden passports saga, from which his family enterprises made huge amounts of money and his links with Russian oligarchs and they will certainly remember his tendency for being economical with the truth whenever allegations surfaced against him. He brought a certain amorality to government that was counterbalanced by a small team of capable ministers that were responsible for the achievements he is now taking personal credit for.

He will also be remembered for surrendering the occupied north to Turkey, spurning the best opportunity for a settlement because he was more interested in securing another five years in office and because he believed partition was a better option – an admission he made to host of people, including the Turkish foreign minister, the late Archbishop Chrysostomos and his ministers, subsequently claiming he had never said such a thing. And now that he is leaving office and does not want to be remembered as the president, who finalised partition, in every speech he makes pays lip service to bizonal, bicommunal federation.

His assertion, not so long ago, that he did “everything humanly possible” for a settlement is emphatically disproved by his actions. He walked out of Crans-Montana, when the sides, according to his closest associates were a “hair’s breadth away for a deal,” and when it would have been very humanly, and politically, possible to have stayed. This behaviour discredited him in the eyes of the international community, including the EU, but he persists with the well-worn narrative about his desire for a settlement. On Thursday, at a farewell lunch for ambassadors, he repeated his hollow rhetoric about reunification on the basis of BBF, being the only way forward. Does he seriously think that these untruthful claims, repeated over and over again, will absolve him of his responsibility for the surrender of the north to Turkey?

When the north is eventually annexed by Turkey, a disastrous outcome nobody can rule out, he will be debited with this. And we doubt anyone will excuse him for it because he introduced Gesy or laid the foundations stone for the Cyprus museum building.