Some months ago, Cyprus communist party, Akel, said it would open its doors to people who were not in the party but had a similar outlook on important issues, such as the Cyprus problem and the economy.
The party leadership had been encouraged by the result of the presidential elections, in which the Akel-backed candidate, Andreas Mavroyiannis – a member of the centre right – made the run-off and lost by a relatively small margin. This showed he had attracted votes from all political quarters and that his ‘progressive’ campaign programme, which had Akel’s approval, had broad appeal.
It is the so-called ‘political progressives’ among the voters that the party wants to bring on board with its opening up to society and invitation to non-members to participate in policy formulation. Since this opening was announced, nothing else was said about it until the last couple of days when reports about the party conference at the end of November started to appear.
According to the reports, proposals for changing of the party’s charter would be put before the conference. One thing that will not change, however, is the ideology of the party which will remain Marxist-Leninist. A report in last Sunday’s Politis, which quoted from the documents prepared for the conference, said the way in which the party’s objectives were expressed had been modernised, but the ideology remained.
Akel described itself as “a party committed to the cause of the working class and the workers… and was guided in its actions by the Marxist-Leninist world view, while it has as its aim the improvement of the life of the people for the building of a society of democratic and human socialism for Cyprus.” This adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology is proof that Akel remains stuck in the past, unable to make the big leap forward and become a European-style, social democratic party, for which there is a need.
In Cyprus at present all parties are right-wing nationalist and there is no group occupying the political centre. An attempt by members of the Greens to move the party in this direction failed, leading to last week’s resignation of its leader and departure of a deputy. This void in the centre could have been filled by Akel if its leadership possessed the mettle to leave its ideological past behind and reinvent itself as a pro-European, left of centre, social democratic party.
This would attract the non-communist ‘progressives’ the party is targeting and would enable it to build a new following. It has to drop the Marxist-Leninist tag, which may have had some relevance in the previous century, but today is synonymous with totalitarian, one-party states and dysfunctional economies. Why would any ‘progressive’ or young voter back a party embracing a world view that has proved an unmitigated disaster wherever it was implemented?
If Akel wants a future as a political force it needs to consign its Marxism to the dustbin of history.
