Twenty Years of European Greens
1984 - 2004
edited by Arnold Cassola & Per Gahrton
Harry Karayan
Cyprus Green Party
- EFGP
delegate in Helsinki 1998
The Cyprus Green party was established in 1996 with the purpose of uniting under a political umbrella most of the Ecological groups that existed at the time. It was recognised quite early that the strong Green parties in Europe could assist us with the Akamas issue where the British used the area as a military training ground. Having the Cyprus government against us, we turned to Europe.
I had a few visits to the EFGP’s meetings as an observer for my party and there I met most of the representatives of other European Green parties. I felt that 1998 was the right time to apply for membership with the support and encouragement of some good friends that probably now read this note.
On voting day for membership, it was with reservation and nervousness, but with a professional approach, that myself and my colleague Dr Tsimillis promoted Cyprus for a “yes” vote. We wanted to get a feeling of how many representatives would vote for us. By mid day there was enough support. When votes were counted we were elated to hear that we scored 100% approval.
I remember the speech we made to support our membership. I had to put the cap of my academic professionalism at its best. I talked about Cyprus as a prosperous country, which was relatively an easy task because I had to present facts like GDP and other well-prepared statistics, but Tsimillis had the more difficult part. He had to present the literary part of why we needed the delegates’ vote. Tsimillis and I were rather comfortable facing the international audience knowing that we had some friendly faces to look at.
The Cyprus Green party has gone a long way since then. Today, in 2003, out of a population of 700 000 people with a total of 56 parliamentarians, we have one MP and three leading members of different local authorities, one in the Nicosia (the capital) municipality, one close to Nicosia and one at a village local authority in the Limassol district.
Our party has just recently approved a new constitution with a wider structural framework in order to involve more people. We always had the problem of a few doing most of the work.
Our present major issue is to cope with the ever increasing number of supporters and new members. From recent polls the percentage of supporters has doubled to 4% since 2001. It seems that a job was well done with having an MP and local reps. Cyprus, now, is going through critical times. There are the negotiation talks for a plan to reunite the island, there has been the campaign for the 2003 Presidential elections and also the political actions for endorsement, by the 15, of Cyprus joining the European Union. These are great challenges, however, I believe it will keep our ranks in full alert, with cohesive spirit and determination to forge ahead with the best results.
