We had quite an eventful Easter this year. There was no danger of boredom. On the one hand, there were the Drousiotis revelations, and on the other the handling of the matter by the Chief of Police, the Minister of Justice and, unfortunately, the President of the Republic himself kept us constantly alert. As always, we split into two camps: the Drousiotis camp and the state camp. Once again, the subject was our national sport: corruption. This time, however, the game became much rougher. There was, let us say, a progression. From white-collar fraud we moved to allegations of paedophilia, rape and even murder. Perhaps, given where we have arrived, with corruption seemingly in our DNA, we should wish for even greater things to come. The objective of both “sides” is the disappearance of corruption. The first, the Drousiotis camp, believe in the difficult path, meaning its eradication. The others believe in the easy path, meaning its concealment and cover-up. One way or another, there will be no corruption. Either corrupt acts will not happen, or we simply will not hear about them.
At the end of the day, perhaps the easy path is the shortest and most effective. Why bother now with investigations, trials and other time-consuming procedures? There is also the practical problem. Who will investigate? And even if investigations are carried out and the cases are brought before the courts, who will judge them? The President of the Republic, clearly irritated and speaking in a sharp tone, told us: “God help us if citizens do not trust the institutions.”Of course, he did not clarify which institutions he was referring to. Did you mean the Law Office, the Police, or the judiciary? If you meant those, Mr President, they themselves do not respect the institutions they serve, so how can the citizen trust them? These are called institutions, but in reality they are a group of amateurs, inadequate and with low moral resistance.
When writer and researcher Makarios Drousiotis reported to the Police that he was under surveillance, not only did the Police fail to investigate, but the officers to whom he made the complaint actually took legal action against him. Are these the authorities you are asking citizens to trust? The Law Office, and specifically the Assistant Attorney-General Savvas Angelides, is referred to in a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights as a man aligned with gender-based violence. Is this yet another institution we are being asked to trust?
And what did you do about all this? You, too, are an institution. Why then should the Cypriot citizen trust you? When an MP is accused of assaulting a woman, a senior party official from a major party is accused of rape, and a mayor is again accused of rape, what do you expect the Cypriot citizen to do? Remain silent? Pretend they did not hear? Pretend they did not understand?
When you yourself admit to a friend that the Drousiotis revelations are enough to make one vomit, and then devise the Europol trick instead of appointing criminal investigators from the very beginning, with what face do you ask the Cypriot citizen to respect the institutions, including the institution of the President of the Republic? Respect for the institutions of a state with so much filth and stench would mean respect for corruption. It is as if you are calling on the Cypriot citizen to say: “Long live corruption.”
When we have reached the point of describing the Drousiotis revelations as an attempt to destabilise the state, what is there left to say? Unfortunately, we fail to understand that states which are already destabilised and discredited are not endangered by destabilisation. The Deputy Government Spokesman Yiannis Antoniou, “in his wisdom”, told us that at least two people will be exposed. That means, Mr Antoniou, that in your own mind the investigations have already been completed and two people are left exposed. Do you not realise that with such careless statements, it is you who is exposed, along with the President you represent?
Nor is the argument that corruption exists everywhere a valid one. Just because everyone beats women, should we beat women too? Just because others rape, should we rape too? I agree that corruption is not exclusively a Cypriot phenomenon. But in other corrupt states, you can still find at least one institution that reacts. The truly Cypriot phenomenon is that here there is not even a single institution left standing upright.
For years, the prevailing view has been that corruption in Greece is on a far greater scale than in Cyprus. We, the blameless and spotless, call Greeks “crooked mainlanders”. Unfortunately for us, that myth too has collapsed. We outdid them. A classic example is the case of the black van. We suspended the prosecution on grounds of public interest, while the so-called crooked mainlanders convicted the Israeli agent.
Unfortunately, Mr President, the latest revelations have levelled the state, and you seem not to feel it. It is not only the revelations themselves, but also the handling of the affair by what is supposed to be an organised state. The handling of the case proved that this is not a normal state. It is a mafia state, a parody state. When I referred in my articles to the Republic of Cyprus as the pseudo-state of the south, I received a great deal of criticism. I was even called a Greek-speaking Turk. I am certainly not a Greek-speaking Turk. I am an active citizen who does not swallow everything whole.
You should finally understand, Mr President, that you too are an institution, that of the President of the Republic. Citizens do not trust you either. Seven out of ten do not trust you. Are the citizens to blame, or are you? In this case, what did you do? What steps did you take to restore the rule of law? Apart from statements for domestic consumption, what else did you do? How is it possible that you try to portray everyone else as mad and unreliable? Your predecessor also used to speak of slanderers and the mentally ill. You have followed bad examples, Mr President. You have confused examples to follow with examples to avoid.
“A thing is not clean because it has been washed, but because it was never dirtied,” wrote the Greek aphorist Dimitrios Kampouroglou. We, with the institutions the President calls upon us to respect as the driving force, have developed the “know-how” to wash everything clean. Even the most stubborn stain can be removed, while at the same time we soil what is still clean because we are confident it too can be laundered.
When this unprecedented case, the revelations of Makarios Drousiotis, began, the President of the Republic did in fact initially handle the matter seriously and appeared determined to ensure a full and objective investigation. In my own posts, I said I would stake my hand on the President. Unfortunately, that proved a hasty and careless position. In the end, my hand was burned. The corrupt are not only those involved in acts of corruption, but also those involved in efforts to cover them up.
“If justice is absent, what else is political power but organised robbery?” wrote Saint Augustine. That is the scenario in which we live. On the one hand, there is a non-existent Law Office and Police. On the other, there is a discredited judiciary and a political authority rushing, through various tricks, to cover up corruption. The only difference is that our own “robbers” are disorganised, clumsy and amateurish.