Thursday, October 22 2009

The Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting begins in Port-of-Spain on November 27 and continues for three days.

Fifty-one heads or their representatives will assemble at The Hyatt for the talks. Two countries have been suspended - the Fiji Islands which was suspended from membership on September 21, 2009 and Nauru, which is in arrears.

We continue today a daily feature on the Commonwealth and will feature the Heads of these States who are expected in Port-of-Spain in November.



Dimitris Christofias, 60, is a left-wing Greek Cypriot politician and the current and sixth President of the Republic of Cyprus. He is also a kidney transplant recipient. Christofias is the General Secretary of AKEL, a Marxist-Leninist party, and is Cyprus’s first, and the European Union’s first and only, communist head of state.

Throughout the election campaign, he pledged to restart talks with Turkish Cypriots in order to find a solution to the Cyprus dispute and reunify the island. He has also supported the closure of the British military bases on Cyprus. Cyprus joined the Commonwealth in 1961.

Christofias became involved in leftist politics early in his youth and held several positions with the youth movement of AKEL (the Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus). His father, who died in 1987, was a progressive builder, member of the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO).

He had his secondary-school education at Nicosia Commercial Lyceum, from where he graduated in 1964.

At the age of 14, he joined the progressive secondary-school students’ organisation PEOM and at the age of 18 he joined EDON (AKEL’s United Democratic Youth Organisation), PEO Trade Unions and AKEL. In 1969, at the fifth Congress of EDON, he was elected member of the Central Council.

Christofias studied at the Institute of Social Sciences and the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow from 1969 to 1974 from which he graduated with the Diploma and degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History. In Moscow he met his wife, Elsie Chiratou, and later returned to Cyprus and political life.

He is a recipient of a living-related kidney transplant, donated by his sister. Christofias was sworn in as President at a ceremony in the House of Representatives on February 28, 2008, vowing that “the solution of the Cyprus problem will be the top priority of my government”. Although proud to be a communist, he says he will leave the free market economy alone. While much of the focus beyond Cyprus has been on Christofias’s communist background and education in Moscow, on the island voters have been more concerned with a solution to Europe’s longest running conflict, the island’s partition since 1974.

Cyprus is the Mediterranean’s third largest island, and one of its most popular tourist destinations. A former British colony, it became an independent republic in 1960 and a member of the Commonwealth in 1961. The Republic of Cyprus is one of the advanced Middle East economies and has been a member of the European Union since May 1, 2004.

In 1974, following 11 years of intercommunal violence and an attempted coup d’état by Greek Cypriot nationalists, Turkey invaded and occupied the northern portion of the island. The Turkish invasion led to the displacement of thousands of Cypriots and the establishment of a separate Turkish Cypriot political entity in the north. This event and its resulting political situation are matters of ongoing dispute.

The Republic of Cyprus has de jure sovereignty over the entire island of Cyprus and its surrounding waters except small portions that are allocated by treaty to the United Kingdom as sovereign military bases. The Republic of Cyprus is de facto partitioned into two main parts, the area under the effective control of the Republic of Cyprus, comprising about 59 percent of the island’s area and the Turkish-occupied area in the north, calling itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, covering about 37 percent of the island’s area and recognised only by Turkey. The name Cyprus has a somewhat uncertain etymology. One suggestion is that it comes from the Greek word for the Mediterranean cypress tree (Cupressus sempervirens),(kypárissos), or even from the Greek name of the henna plant (Lawsonia alba),(kýpros). Another school suggests that it stems from the Eteocypriot word for copper. Georges Dossin, for example, suggests that it has roots in the Sumerian word for copper (zubar) or for bronze (kubar), from the large deposits of copper ore found on the island. Through overseas trade the island has given its name to the Classical Latin word for the metal through the phrase aes Cyprium, “metal of Cyprus”, later shortened to Cuprum. Cyprus is also known as the Island of Aphrodite, Venus, or Love since according to Greek mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, was born in Paphos.

Cyprus is the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite and Adonis, and home to King Cinyras, Teucer and Pygmalion. The earliest confirmed site of human activity is Aetokremnos, situated on the south coast, indicating that hunter-gatherers were active on the island from around 10,000 BC, with settled, village communities dating from 8200 BC. The arrival of the first humans correlates with the extinction of the dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants, the skulls of which gave rise to the Cyclops myth. Water wells discovered by archaeologists in western Cyprus are believed to be among the oldest in the world, dated at 9,000 to 10,500 years old. Remains of an eight-month-old cat were discovered buried with its human owner at a separate Neolithic site in Cyprus. The grave is estimated to be 9,500 years old, predating ancient Egyptian civilisation and pushing back the earliest known feline-human association significantly.

There were several fluxes of population and settlement as well as newcomers to the island during the Neolithic age, although earthquakes caused the infrastructure to fail around 3800 BC. Several waves of incoming peoples followed, including some from Asia minor which strengthened the metal working crafts on the island. Although finds from this time are rare, those finds are of high quality. The Bronze Age was heralded by the arrival of Anatolians who came to the island around 2400 BC.

The Mycenaean Greeks first reached Cyprus around 1600 BC, with settlements dating from this period scattered all over the island. Another wave of Greek settlement is believed to have taken place in the period 1100-1050 BC, with the island’s predominantly Greek character dating from this period.

On August 16,1960, Cyprus attained independence after an agreement in Zürich and London between the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey. The UK retained two Sovereign Base Areas in Akrotiri and Dhekelia while government posts and public offices were allocated by ethnic quotas giving the minority Turks a permanent veto, 30 percent in parliament and administration, and granting the three mother-states guarantor rights.

The Cypriot economy is prosperous and has diversified in recent years. According to the latest IMF estimates, its per capita GDP (adjusted for purchasing power) is, at $28,381, just above the average of the European Union.

Cyprus has been sought as a base for several offshore businesses for its highly developed infrastructure. Economic policy of the Cyprus government has focused on meeting the criteria for admission to the European Union. Adoption of the euro as a national currency is required of all new countries joining the European Union, and the Cypriot government adopted the currency on January 1, 2008.