Can you hear the violins?

On last night's CBC political talk show "Proektasis", Kareklas hosted AKEL's Andros Kyprianou, DIKO's George Kolokassides, and DISY's Christos Pourgourides.

As expected the show was at first dominated by the evergreen Cyprob, the new President's approach to the negotiation process, and the proposed meeting of the President with Mehmet Ali Talat next week.

It was fun to watch Kyprianou and Pourgourides agreeing on just about all points. I could hear violins... The talk show morphed into an interesting game of "sort the opposition from the coalition", with Pourgourides saying "we will be more able to support a solution from the opposition rather than from the Government". The political landscape is now set to provide us with more entertainment than ever before. God knows we deserve it.

It was even more fun hearing Kolokasides trying to revive the Great Annan Terror, by accusing Pourgourides of reviving the Annan Plan as a point of reference for the upcoming negotiations. Only to be cut down by, of all people, Kareklas himself with "But Mr. Kolokasides, what Mr. Pourgourides said was no more and no less than what Tassos Papadopoulos said..."

DISY chairman Anastasiades, talking to TV reporters earlier, when he announced the return of his party to the National Council, was even funnier. "If (AKEL) indeed fulfils what they have promised, we will be happy not to exercise opposition".

I hope this time around, when the going does get rough, these guys are able to negotiate a better solution than last time (all right, chuckle sarcastically if you wish, but there's no tax on hope) so that if indeed we go with a negotiated solution, it has a hope of working.

And I hope that if it does come to another impasse, these guys handle it so we don't end up carrying the can like last time. If in 2004 there had been none of the totally un-necessary scare-mongering and hysteria before the referendum, and none of the even more un-necessary witch hunting, name calling and smearing after the referendum, the No vote - which, as was obvious at the time of the run-up to the referendum, would have carried the day anyway - could have become political gold for our leadership, enabling them to continue negotiating from a stronger position. But Grand Alchemist Tassos and his minions turned gold to dirt.

I bet DIKO, and especially the Tassos faction, are seething, and together with the more rejectionist elements in EDEK they are chomping at the bit to start laying into Christofias for "treason" and "sellout". Let's see how long it takes before the dogs break out of the kennel.