Source: Cyprus Mail
May 13, 2016
THE creation of a crematorium is just one of the many attempts to deconstruct the identity of Cypriots, the head of Pnoi Laou (People’s Spirit) party Athos Kyranides said on Thursday.
Analysing his party’s “worldview” ahead of the May 22 parliamentary elections on state broadcaster CyBC radio, Kyranides said that for the country to become a booming economy and society, it must first “overcome its spiritual crisis”.
He said his party, which was founded last year, “professes the (Christian) Orthodox faith, which is based on love and freedom”.
“Each person is free to do as they please but acknowledging and promoting what is illegal and unnatural is another thing,” Kyranides said.
“Abortion is everyone’s right. If they want to be a murderer it is their right, but the government cannot encourage this”.
He added that the same was true as regards cohabitation agreements. “Anyone can live with whomever they want but the government cannot recognise this and say that it is the norm”.
He added that the norm for Cypriots is living according to the Christian faith, as they have done for thousands of years.
“The same goes with cremations,” he said. The norm, Kyranides said, is to be buried in the cemetery.
“We just can’t deconstruct the identity of the people, because of one, two, three or five people,” he said. In Cyprus, he said, there is a “spiritual relationship”.
“We are a Greek Orthodox state. The faith of a people is an inseparable part of its identity,” Kyranides said.
He added that one third of the country was occupied, the remaining two thirds is a “slave to materialism”, while globalisation deconstructed “the values of our people, the state, the economy and institutions”.
Cohabitation agreements, he said, abortions and cremations are indicative of the decay of society.
He added that Hellenism was under a “programmed attack to force it to surrender by means of the stock market crisis, the Annan plan, the bank crisis and the haircut”.
Holding events like football matches on Sundays and keeping shops open was another attack on Greek identity, he said. He added that Sunday was a rest day, dedicated to one’s religious and family activities.
Kyranides said that Pnoi Laou has only seven candidates running in the upcoming elections as this is a sacred number for them, and that the party would also disband in seven years.
“We don’t want to give room for clientelism to develop, like other parties do,” he said. He added that seven years is plenty of time for the party, if it is elected, to make the necessary changes and pass on to the new generation “a very different political scene, to manage its continuation”. He said that their rules forbid cooperation with other political parties.
