CYPRUS GREENS REMAIN FAITHFUL PAPADOPOULOS ALLIES

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NICOSIA 000034

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE, EUR/PGI, INR/B, OES

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/13/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM SENV CY
SUBJECT: CYPRUS GREENS REMAIN FAITHFUL PAPADOPOULOS ALLIES

REF: NICOSIA 23

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires a.i. Jane B. Zimmerman, Reason 1.4 (b)


1. (C) SUMMARY: Cyprus's Greens should have little
affection for a cantankerous chain-smoker who equates
Birkenstocks with Wagnerian opera, not fuzzy footwear. Yet
the island's pre-eminent environmental movement, represented
in Parliament since 2001, steadfastly supports RoC President
Tassos Papadopoulos and his campaign for re-election in
February. Leader George Perdikis attributes the decision to
back Papadopoulos to grudging admiration for the
septuagenarian, whose smarts, adaptability, and political
courage dwarf his competitors'. Greens priorities in coming
years will require significant Presidential intervention, the
payback Perdikis aims to secure (along with a Cabinet seat)
for supporting Papadopoulos electorally. Prior party
pronouncements and Embassy recollections reveal, however,
that similar hard-line positions on the Cyprus Problem, not
admiration for the incumbent's intellect and political savvy,
underpin this "Green and Gray" arrangement. END SUMMARY.

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Small, but Growing
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2. (U) Cyprus's "Kinisy Ecologon" (Ecological Movement, or
Greens) dates from February 1996. Its founders were
environmentalists and members of pressure groups then-united
in opposition to military exercises on and near Cyprus,
cultivation and marketing of genetically-modified organisms
(GMOs),continued utilization of high-frequency antennae at
the British Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs),and other island
cause celebres. Taking their first crack at politics in the
May 1996 legislative elections, the Greens failed to obtain a
seat. Five years later, they crossed the 1.7 percent
threshold and sent Party Secretary General Perdikis to
Parliament. The Greens enjoyed similar electoral success in
the most recent (2006) race, returning Perdikis to the
Environmental and Interior Committees. The party is the
smallest of those currently supporting Papadopoulos's
re-election (DIKO, EDEK, and EUROKO control 11, 5, and 4 MPs,
respectively).

3. (C) Perdikis's wont for turning courtesy calls into media
events -- last repeated at Greens HQ in October -- resulted
in his removal from the Embassy's preferred contact list.
Nonetheless, with elections just 40 days off and Cyprus's
smaller parties playing oversized roles in a neck-and-neck
race, we called on him January 10, armed with our talking
points in case of ambush. Perdikis chose not to exploit the
meeting, however, and proved thoughtful and expansive (if not
entirely sincere, as we deduced later) throughout.

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Party Agenda Necessitates Strange Bedfellows
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4. (SBU) Cyprus's winter drought provided the perfect
opening to solicit the Greens' priorities under a second
Papadopoulos administration. Water issues indeed troubled
Perdikis, Cyprus's inefficient farms foremost among them.
Agriculture contributed perhaps five percent to the island's
GDP, he observed, but consumed two-thirds of its H20,
preposterous in times of shortage. Crafting a sustainable
water management policy represented Job One for his party,
Perdikis explained. Numbers Two through Four required
weaning Cyprus from dependence on fossil fuels, protecting
the sensitive Akamas Peninsula from development, and ensuring
the island remained free of genetically-modified organisms
(GMOs).


5. (SBU) Gaining ground on the ambitious policy agenda meant
taking on vested economic interests, Perdikis asserted; the
Greens, while committed, were small, with just 3000 core
supporters. The party needed strong allies and had found one
in Tassos Papadopoulos. Despite his old-school credentials
-- "Papadopoulos is a relic of the 60s," Perdikis observed --
the President possessed a fierce intellect, a willingness to
consider alternate points of view, and the guts to take on
the strongest opponents. Of Papadopoulos challengers
Dimitris Christofias (AKEL) and Ioannis Kasoulides (DISY),
he could not state the same. They lacked real understanding
of environmental issues, and were either too weak or too
inexperienced (or both) to do battle with Akamas developers,
farmers' associations, or other special interest groups.


6. (SBU) The Greens had supported Papadopoulos during his
first run and would continue to back the President, Perdikis
assured; the 8000 votes it had won in the 2006

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Parliamentarian elections represented approximately two
percent of the electorate, a not-insignificant total in this
year's tight race. Internal polling showed party cohesion at
65 percent, Perdikis offered, equal to other parties not
running their own candidates. Unlike in 2003 -- "when we
were too small and new to make demands" -- the Greens sought
a Cabinet slot as quid pro quo, namely the Ministry of
Agriculture and Natural Resources. No consensus candidate
for the position had yet to emerge from party deliberations,
he revealed. Perdikis himself had withdrawn his name from
consideration, citing his preference for continued work in
the legislature.


7. (SBU) The conversation turned to the Cyprus problem and
to Marios Matsakis, the quirky European Parliamentarian who
days earlier had announced his decision to stand in
February's election. Matsakis's two-state solution (Reftel)
appealed to those voters convinced that Cyprus's two
communities were incapable of reconciling, we noted. Did the
Greens leader fear that his candidacy threatened
Papadopoulos's chances? Matsakis's extreme positions would
find few takers, Perdikis argued. Rather than dividing the
island into two sovereign entities, Turkish and Greek
Cypriots needed to engage constructively to found a federal
state, he concluded.

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Sincerity? Not Here
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8. (C) COMMENT: Our BS meter began flickering as Perdikis
extolled the notoriously rigid Papadopoulos's flexibility; it
positively pegged hours later upon cross-checking his
statements and combing Post files. In one of our findings,
the Greens leader in fact had lobbied the President for a
Cabinet slot in 2003, but lost out to larger,
better-organized coalition mates when dividing the
ministerial spoils. And on the Cyprus Problem, few party
bosses are less supportive of a federal solution -- a paper
approved at the Greens' most-recent "Pancyprian Conference"
delineated clear opposition to "any division of the island
and of the people of Cyprus based on ethnic origin or
religion." We walked into this meeting suspecting that a
shared desire for a unitary Cypriot state explained the
unnatural alliance between Papadopoulos and Perdikis, and
nothing that conspired therein changed our minds. But why
the apparent attempt to mislead us, especially with CyProb
statements that differed substantively from the party's
previously stated positions? We seriously doubt the Greens
have pulled a policy 180. Much more likely, Papadopoulos may
have urged the party, as he earlier pressed right-wing
EUROKO, to avoid mention of alternative (and to them,
preferable) solution models in favor of the more palatable
(to Turkish Cypriots and the international community)
bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. END COMMENT.

ZIMMERMAN