An irrelevant election

The brilliant classical scholar and poet A. E. Housman had a profound mistrust of opinions that are shared by a large number of people. Even, perhaps especially, when the vast majority of manuscripts contained the same version of a line of Latin poetry, the former Cambridge University professor was dogged in pursuit of what he saw as a more likely — and correct — alternative. His views on last month’s presidential elections in Northern Cyprus would doubtless have been entertaining and scathing in equal measure. The anonymous commentators and analysts so oft quoted (or invented) by political writers have mostly been trotting out the same, simplistic line of the likely effects of the outcome, no matter who won. The incumbent president, Mehmet Ali Talat, was credited with holding 71 meetings with his long-time fellow trade unionist, Greek Cypriot leader Demetris Christofias, which led to a series of unofficial and unenforceable