.
The elections period is officially underway with the first public opinion poll, just 14 months away from the parliamentary vote, suggesting what the parties fear most – total apathy towards the establishment.
All this time, party leaders had perched themselves on their pedestals of power and thought they were untouchable, that their childish bickering on (taxpayer-sponsored) public airtime would help them last a few more months and blame anyone else for their shortcomings and incompetence.
By burdening the President with every decision possible, the establishment (parties, unions, civil service and media) sought to pass the buck to whoever is sitting in the Palace today, until their own time of executive control came around.
But they seemed to have gotten it all wrong. The Sigma TV poll this week showed that all party support has diminished to half, “no one” would win 28% of the vote, President Anastasiades’ rule is neither positive nor negative, no single person makes it to the half-way threshold of “who do you trust”, two-thirds want to renegotiate the MoU with the Troika, and all institutions have a poor image (including the Church, the judiciary and the media).
Worse still, DISY chief Averof Neophytou ranks below communist AKEL’s Andros Kyprianou, which suggests that it is about time for a leadership change at the ruling party, while MP Nicos Tornaritis has already suggested that the only way for the parties to regain the trust of the poeple is to hold elections immediately. Already, MEP Eleni Theocharous, a highly popular personality who was shunned by the ambitions of Anastasiades and Neophytou, has hinted she would break away if there is no radical change in the party, which she says is controlled by self-serving, corrupt and egotistical politicians.
Society needs to be cleansed of the stench in the political system, and just because someone might claim he or she has just arrived on the scene, does not absolve them of the sins of their comrades – far from it, many are or have long been aware of the dirt within their own parties and did nothing about it.
Evidence of this is the growing list of corrupt municipal officials (all elected after party vetting) and the fact that MPs are moaning about the fact that more than half the House members have non-performing loans, with just one bank. The only way for deputies to put up a smokescreen around their privileged finances is to demand that the Central Bank Governor be sacked, simply so that they could appoint another person who will cover up their NPLs. True, the Governor has not done her job properly, because these revelations of MPs’ NPLs should have come to the fore a long time ago and ordered to pay, just as every ordinary citizen is faced with excessive pressure from the banks who want to recover assets or restructure loans.
