.
Now that the dust has settled and people have already forgotten the cocky “nothing wrong here” comments in the aftermath of the Moneyval report, perhaps it’s time to sit back and take a good look at how badly we dealt with the whole issue, which, at best can be described as a public relations nightmare, and see how we can move on.
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that corruption exists, both with monetary rewards and political favouritism. Transparency is a must and meritocracy must become the rule, not the exception.
President Anastasiades has been given a golden opportunity and a public mandate to clean this mess and appoint or hire people in public positions based on what they can do and not which party they belong to. But he is moving very slowly and with the exception of a handful of appointments, nothing much has changed from the previous administration.
The feeling among ordinary people is that they have been let down – by the politicians, the banks, the government and their employers. People want to look up to role models and be given a ray of hope that things will improve. But this can only come from our leadership, who for fear of losing precious voters, don’t want to upset the status quo and are content with sweeping problems under the carpet.
And if we want to regain the trust of our European partners, the Moneyval report should be taken much more seriously and not brushed to one side saying that other countries rank worse than Cyprus. Unfortunately for us, other countries also have a higher rate of prosecution and people have ended up in jail. Has anyone gone to jail in Cyprus on charges of corruption or for “crimes against the national interest”?
The content of the Moneyval report is identical to the conclusions of the Del Ponte investigations for the Hague Tribunal in search of the Milosevic millions. We know what happened but chose, once again, to sweep everything under the carpet. Even former Laiki boss Andreas Vgenopoulos claimed he had damning documents about the pro-Milosevic deals at the bank, but has so far failed to produce a single sheet of evidence to back up the claim.
Instead of pointing the finger at others, let’s start by putting our own house in order. Let’s admit to mistakes of the past, prosecute those who have broken the law and restore faith in the public. And let’s do it fast.
