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anking technology, administrative convenience, and Cyprus ' relatively advanced
banking system 57 . Social class is not determined by method of payment, nor by the
trimmings of consumer society. The Cypriot Communist Party has had more
électoral support than any other in Western Europe. In the 1996 élections to the
House of Représentatives, the party polled 33% of the vote (2% more than in the
1991 parliamentary élection). Discussing grants and subsidies to the agricultural
sector, reflected in public investment elsewhere in the economy, favouring the rieh
and well connected, Christodoulou argues: "The surprising thing is that this state of
affairs appeals to ail, if one is to judge from rhetoric. The milking of the state by
the better-off seems to be universally acceptable. Here is middle-class ideology if
one is looking for it" 58 , as Christodoulou clearly is.
Behind the statistics demonstrating rapid economic recovery, behind the significant
social achievements of the refugee resettlement and reintegration, the contradictory
implication is that the war accelerated the concentration of wealth. Christodoulou
argues, the state was keen to promote and develop the entrepreneurial class as the
medium of reconstruction and it is acknowledged that the richer entrepreneurs
benefited most 59 . It is unclear from his text whether there were losers in the post-
(74)-war dash for growth (other than the environment which he acknowledges), to
what extent they suffered and, if and how they expressed that politically. The
57 6/4/1998 Financial Times, quoted Solon Triantafyllides, chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the
largest banking group in Cyprus accounting for over 40 % of the business: "Technologically, we are
well advanced. We don't have to be jealous of any of the European banks", p.31, column 1.
58 Christodoulou 1992. op. cit., p.70.
59 ibid., p. 216
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