Corporate governance … in the government?

What Cypriot politicians love most in order to cover their backs is to blame everything on their opponents – the present government blames the previous administration for all the ills in society and the economy, the opposition says those in power are incompetent, and so on.

What Cypriot politicians hate most is when somebody tells them they are wrong and how these problems ought to be fixed, as those in power honestly believe they have the God-given right to do as they like and only be judged by their voter-citizens come the next round of elections.

The recent verbal bout between the newly enthroned Archbishop and the House President over whether the island’s primate should be involved in national politics or not, was just such an example for study by any budding young student of political science, ie. that freedom of speech is free, as long as you control who retains that right.

What Cyprus really needs in order to become a proactive community is to introduce Good Corporate Governance in the government. In other words, teach those who govern about modern methods of management, communication skills, to be honest and smile from time to time and not be miffed every time someone criticizes them. Only then will our European partners start taking us seriously.

The mess created with the lack of meritocracy in the National Guard — which the President defended by saying that the island’s armed forces do not have to abide by strict regulations of fairness and equality – is another example of how the system has failed, despite claims by present and past administrations about the introduction of new transparent regulations.

If a conscript is blind in one eye, or has a permanent limp due to a birth defect, or even suffers from psychological problems due to a childhood trauma, then the competent committee in the Ministry of Defence should deal with that person’s application for exemption from national service. If such a department actually exists, then why resort to your local or favoured party MP or Minister, if not for a favour under the justification of this being for ‘humanitarian reasons’. How pathetic…

Perhaps one solution to the growing problem (it will never go away), is to transform the National Guard into a lean professional army with a short-term reservist duty to abolish the two-year conscription and introduce more frequent reservist call-ups.

This, after all, was one of the main arguments of free economy preacher Milton Friedman who died last week. Though the Nobel prize winner developed many of his theories over three decades ago, these comprise the principle backbone of many economic policies around the world today.