Bananiot wrote:Just ignore the cyber tiger, why do you bother to converse with him? Cannedmoose, I saw your post the first time, no need to repeat it thrice.
Sorry re, I kept trying to make it the top of the thread so we could get past his nonsense.
Bananiot wrote:You are spot on about AKEL, being a stalinist party it is organised around so called democtatic centralism. DIKO and EDEK are basically Bathist parties, thus they are no better
That's an interesting comparison, I'll have to look into that.
Bananiot wrote:DISI allows some form of divergence but look at what happened to it with the splinter group that set up the European Party.
Which provides evidence to the other parties that their tight rein is the correct policy, otherwise factionalism will end up degrading them from the inside. I think you mean European Parties now, since you now have the European Democrats (or whatever they're calling themselves) and Evrodi... a faction within a faction... nice
Bananiot wrote:Unfortunately even now in the 21st century, politics are at an embryonic stage in Cyprus. The leaders are not seriously questioned and this is obvious when they appear on television in interviews. The interviewer makes a special effort not to make it difficult for the politician, probably because his party ensured his position at the tv station. When Papadopoulos, for example, gave an inter tv canal interview, all interviewers were firing friendly fire and no one bothered to ask about his shortcomings. In short, most people owe something to a party and the party is always exploiting this. After all, do you know another country where everyone's aspiration is to be appointed somewhere in the government?
That's been my take on things as well. A couple of years ago I knew absolutely bugger all about Cypriot politics and wanted to know even less. The more I find out, the more I'm convinced that Cypriot politics has not yet evolved into a modern 'steady-state' form of politics, in which party policies replace personalities as the driving force in the organisation. Ironically, I think AKEL operates closest to this line, probably by virtue of the party's longer history and its adherence to an identifiable and strong ideology.
I also think that DHSY and EDEK are moving in this direction also, albeit slowly because they are still very much dominated by their founders. In a way you can look at the DHSY split as a sign of the party growing up and working out exactly where its members stand. It also means that Anastasiades should have a party united behind him, rather than anti-AP factions calling for his head.
DHKO are almost a mystery to me. It seems that they act like a centre-right party, yet the claim is that they are EDEK-esque and are social democratic - at least according to Papadopoulos declaration when he stated, 'we are a social democratic party'. They remain a bit of an enigma in that respect, and don't seem to have any clear direction beyond 'steady as she goes' and a strong stance on the Cyprob.
Does any of this make sense? I'm getting to grips with this slowly, but it's always helpful to see if I'm glaringly out anywhere.