.
I admit to giving a huge sigh of relief when the President gave his unadulterated support and absolute public backing to his under-fire Finance Minister who was blamed for destroying the island’s second largest bank.
There would have been a cataclysmic break with tradition if the Finance Minister Harris Georgiades resigned of his own volition – or god forbid, the president was forced to sack him because of some archaic notion of political responsibility.
In Cyprus, no politician is accountable for their behaviour or decision making, neither can they be held responsible like anyone else in a normal job, because they are a different breed devoid of any ethical or moral judgement.
Under the constitution the establishment always knows best, it is beyond reproach or prison and allowed to go about its business immune to public opinion or a sense of duty.
Where there is greed, corruption, nepotism and incompetence don’t expect any reasonable sense of decency to survive when the edifice comes crashing down in a thick plume of dust.
There was a feeling of the pantomime villain when the Opposition called for the head of Georgiades after he was blamed by the public inquiry into the Co-op collapse of being responsible for its demise as he was caretaker of the nationalised bank.
Those calling for him to resign or be sacked didn’t really believe it would happen – the history of Cyprus politics suggests such an event is rarer than sighting a sabre-toothed tiger – they were just playing to a sparsely populated gallery on the off chance the minister would fall on his sword. No chance.
The government didn’t exactly come out of a derelict building with its hands up, weapons down, shouting mea culpa we should have done better.
No, it came out lobbing hand grenades and firing pot shots at its critics saying the minister was a hero and the bank was so badly infested with cronyism it could not be saved but the economy was.
In the real world – somewhere like Wakanda – the minister would have taken political responsibility because the Last Days of Rome happened on his watch and he was the one supposedly in charge of the troubled bank.
Whether the bank could be saved post-2013 after dishing out millions worth of dodgy loans without security to satisfy patronage at work is another matter.
It’s the system that killed the Co-op, treating depositors and tax payer’s money like confetti thrown after the wedding party has passed through.
Cyprus was on the brink of bankruptcy after its banking system went into meltdown as a cause of the high jinks and mad-cap banking behaviour that was prevalent at the Co-op.
It was a failed bank drowning in mismanagement, party interference and favouritism – all the ingredients that led to a haircut on deposits.
In other words, the Co-op was the product of a dysfunctional and corrupt system that thrives on privilege and elitism rather than sound economic judgement or fairness.
This island went belly-up because politicians, government, the supervisory authorities were not up to the required standard – a similar perfect storm of brazen negligence and ineptitude brought the Co-op to its knees.
It was flogged off like a knackered second-hand car for scrap metal when it cost the island’s entire GDP to save it.
Georgiades got the biggest slap in the face for the debacle because he did what all good Cypriot politicians usually do – conceal the truth and cover for his friends even when they are so bad at their job the stench can be smelt in the deepest jungles of Borneo.
The inquiry equated Georgiades's responsibility to those of the “main stakeholder in a private company that becomes insolvent due to that person's mismanagement”.
This may be true, but how many CEO’s have gone to jail because they couldn’t manage a Cypriot company out of a paper bag or didn’t see the train crash coming.
Usually they retire with a pension or receive a golden handshake, otherwise, they move on to the next well-paid job, so Georgiades was playing to type.
Of course, the Opposition is calling for the guillotine because they need to divert attention from their inglorious role in all this.
They understand the President is going to stand by his man because to do otherwise would show that he also was culpable in doing little to prevent the eventual fire sale.
What the inquiry was really telling us is that everything that happened at the Co-op – senior executive bad judgment, inaction and ineptitude in dealing with a mountain of bad loans – will be repeated with the same disastrous consequences.
The inquiry's 840-page report recommended that police initiate possible criminal prosecution against top executives over 'suspicious' loan write-offs and bingo spending. We’ve been down that road before and the journey doesn’t end well.
It said bad management had plagued the bank for decades leading to a slew of “irregularities and abuses,” that entailed political party string-pulling to secure loans for friends and associates. Sound familiar?
