Our View: Will Disy stay in opposition or is there a policy change?

The new Disy leader and president of the House of Representatives, Annita Demetriou, on Monday visited the Diko offices for a meeting with party chief Nicolas Papadpoulos. After the meeting, Demetriou said that although the two parties had differences, there was a need for the them to find common ground as they had done in the past, because there were “complex challenges that we have to deal with and above all is our country, our Cyprus.” They agreed to stay in contact so as to find ways of working on handling matters, and “particularly of domestic issues.”

This sounded as if Demetriou was preparing the ground to take Disy into the government alliance and that the idea of exercising “constructive opposition” has fallen by the wayside. Or is this the new spirit of Cyprus politics, introduced with great success by President Nikos Christodoulides during his campaign in which he expressed no disagreement with any of his rivals and always spoke about synergies, cooperation and consensus. It would appear the new Disy leader has also adopted this non-confrontational approach to politics and is already looking for cooperation with Diko, the main backer of the government.

Our democracy is at risk from the politics of cooperation and consensus. If all parties are cooperating, who will question government decisions, who will scrutinise its bills in the legislature and who will hold it accountable for its actions? Disy will be too busy working with Diko to meet the complex challenges facing the government to exercise opposition. Surely, there can be support for government bills that Disy supports, without having to enter some understanding with Diko first.

The real absurdity of Monday’s meeting was that the two leader also agreed for their parties to jointly inform people about what a settlement of the Cyprus problem would entail. This came across more like an April Fool’s story, bearing in mind the radically different position of the two parties on the Cyprus issue. Will Diko and Disy reach a consensus on how people should be enlightened? How will Diko enlighten people about a federal settlement that it has always opposed? The party is even opposed to the Guterres framework and most convergences reached in the past. With which party’s version of a settlement will the public be enlightened?

Demetriou is new to the job and perhaps is still feeling her way in party politics but looking for ways to cooperate with parties in the government alliance, at a time when she is supposed to lead a party, which decided to be in opposition, does not make any sense at all.