The Constitution Breaks Down

Abstract

The birth had been difficult, but the new Republic seemed a lusty and vigorous infant in spite of its constitutional weaknesses. The island had the second highest standard of living in the eastern Mediterranean; only Israel’s was better. The per capita income was low according to Western ideas, but it was higher than that of Greece and almost twice that of Turkey. In the first full year of independence (1961) the value of exports from Cyprus, mostly in minerals and agricultural produce, amounted to nearly £18 million. The Emergency had had little effect on the island’s productivity and, once the fighting had stopped, tourism soon picked up; under the Republic it expanded quickly. The British bases were a major source of revenue, both directly and from the money that the troops spent in other parts of the island. There was no shortage of doctors or teachers, as there was in many other newly-independent countries, and the new state already had a competent civil service. Cyprus was quickly welcomed to the United Nations and, with Makarios’s blessing, it stayed in the Commonwealth. Preferential tariffs and remittances from Cypriots in Britain contributed further to the economy.