Democratic Rally Spokesman Prodromos Prodromou

By Janet McMahon

Prodromos Prodromou and Henry Kissinger both were born in Germany. While the former American secretary of state’s birthplace makes him ineligible to run for president in the country where he now holds citizenship (and where, some might say, he already has done enough damage), Cypriot MP Prodromou currently is the spokesman for the ruling Democratic Rally Party, and could one day run for president of his country if he so desired.

To explain this distinction, one must go back a generation, for Kissinger’s parents became exiles when they fled Germany for the U.S., while Prodromou’s became exiles when they fled Cyprus for Europe. Thus, the Kissingers found a new home, while Prodromou returned to his family’s original home, albeit one he had never known.

Prodromou could not return to his family’s ancestral village, however, because it is in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. In fact, it is this village, Assia, which has the most per capita missing persons from the 1974 Turkish invasion: of a population of some 2,000 to 3,000 residents, 82 still are missing. (Until recently the number stood at 83. The remains of Andreas Kassapis, a 17-year-old American citizen at the time of the invasion, have since been identified and returned to his family in Detroit following U.S. congressional pressure on the Turkish Cypriot government.)

Following his studies in France, Prodromou worked as an economist for the Central Bank of Cyprus. He was not involved in politics, and did not belong to any political party, when President Glafcos Clerides proposed that he run for Parliament as a Democratic Rally candidate. Prodromou accepted the president’s offer, and was elected in 1996.

It was some two years after the events of 1974, when the country faced “a totally new situation,” Prodromou told the Washington Report, that the Democratic Rally party, joining with other Cypriot non-leftists, emerged from the remnants of the opposition to Archbishop Makarios. Until then President Clerides had served as Makarios’ right hand man, his party spokesman said, and for many years was president of the chamber of parliament. After 1974, Prodromou said, Clerides suddenly “found himself head of the opposition to Makarios.”

The new party’s platform consisted of four key demands, Prodromou said: the proper functioning of democratic institutions (parliamentary elections having twice been postponed in the 1970s); national reconciliation; an end to the misunderstandings leading to the 1974 Greek colonels’ coup against Makarios, including the issue of enosis, or union with Greece; and the need to achieve a solution to the Cyprus problem as soon as possible.

(Although, in Prodromou's opinion, a parliamentary system would work better for Cyprus, the current presidential system—whereby a president is elected separately from parliament representatives—was imposed by the British in the 1960s, he said, “because they thought it would help ease ethnic tensions.” )

Today, the Democratic Rally spokesman said, “we see that this is a party that has lasted, that is not only linked to its founders. We are the first party to have had a change in leadership,” he noted. While in 1993 the party ran in coalition with the Democratic Party, in the last election President Clerides “was not supported by any other major party,” Prodromou said.

Nevertheless, he continued, “on the real questions of the Cyprus issue, all the parties have a common stand,” differing only on issues of tactics and procedures. It’s possible, in fact, he said, that there could be “bigger arguments within one party than between parties.”

What has Prodromou “very worried” is the possibility that “Turkish troops are not here [in northern Cyprus] to protect but to control.” He described the fact that “Turkish Cypriots are now a minority (as opposed to settlers from the Turkish mainland) in the area under Turkish control” as “very worrisome for the future—with whom will we unify?” he wondered. “Are we going to have a country that reflects human rights and similar values, or will we come under the patronage of Turkey and Greece?

“Only if we can reach a solution that is true and solid will emigrants return to Cyprus,” he asserted. “Right now we have a dynamic economy and a progressive society ready to reform and adapt to technological progress. There is room for everybody.”

Janet McMahon is the managing editor of the Washington Report.