Cyprus Editorial: Auditor General should prosecute

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Used to be that the most dreaded person in Cyprus was the President of the Republic, not for nationalistic or patriotic reasons, but because he alone could make or beak your civil service career, approve or reject your public service contract, or even ensure you got unwarranted privileges for government housing, a low-interest loan or a state grant.

 
Enter the Auditor General, the civil service watchdog whose mandate is simple – to make sure transparency is respected throughout government activities and that the taxpayer is not cheated.
In recent years, the last three Presidents also took the Auditor General’s work more seriously, with the incumbent almost giving the chief investigator a free hand to chase down anything suspicious, dodgy or untransparent.
As a result, members of the sitting Cabinet have been in Odysseas Michaelides’ line of fire, who has been rightly doing his job and asking questions that would otherwise have seemed awkward.
But his remit should not just end there. There are too many ‘grey areas’ and no-one, not least the members of parliament, are willing to go the extra mile to investigate the abuse of public money, especially when it refers to funds used not only by the government machine but by public-service organisations as well.
Naturally, as expected, every opposition party has joined the bandwagon to criticise the President for not keeping his ministers’ hands clean, but these parties also refuse to deal with matters that may boomerang, hence are selective about what they moan about and when.
The only way to put an end to corruption is for the Auditor General to be allowed to prosecute, in cooperation with the Attorney General’s office, or at least to be allowed to impose hefty fines, as hundreds of cases are simply too cumbersome to deal with an no-one has the time to investigate.
Only then will we see citizens becoming law-abiding once again.