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When John Denver wrote ‘Leaving on a jet plane’ back in 1966, he was singing about his journey of soul searching and seeking a permanent place he would call home.
Nothing to do with Donald Trump ditching Air Force One to cut back on public spending (though he increased it in other areas), nor with Nicos Anastasiades leasing flight time on an executive jet to galivant around Europe and the world with his presidential entourage.
The fuss created over the Palace allocating €60,000 last year – or more than a third of its travel budget – on the Learjet service, would never have come to the fore had the plane not encountered problems upon take-off in New York for the delegation to return home after the UN general assembly.
The problem here is that no one has given any explanation whether the service has turned out to be efficient, both financially and timewise, than travelling on commercial carriers.
Neither has there been any mention of whether the remaining passengers on board the private jet were state officials, for whom air travel was justified, or members of the president’s family, in which case did they pay out of their own pocket and not pass the bill to the taxpayer.
What should be abundantly clear is the lack of sufficient commercial airline connections in and out of Cyprus, and what the Transport Ministry, in conjunction with the Junior Ministry for Tourism, are doing about it.
Ever since Cobalt shut down, for all the wrong reasons, airfares have skyrocketed, while the collapse of Thomas Cook adds to the strain on available seats, pushing ticket prices further up. Connectivity has been thrown out the window.
MPs and other observers have bemoaned the Palace’s transport budget, while there is no mention of the Greens, for example, adopting a hybrid-only policy for its members’ cars, or even going all-electric, something that even the Presidency should have done, even for the sake of seeming to care for the environment.
Inefficient air travel also contributes to our carbon footprint and high emissions, an issue which should be a key concern for the Environment Ministry, as well as the competent Commissioner.
So, before we do the math, all these parameters should be taken into consideration, the cost efficiencies, time management and even eco-impact, before we jump to conclusions.
There is no doubt that when it comes to transparency and public-friendly gestures, Cypriot politicians rank bottom on all scores, which increases the need for MPs to monitor the executive and state officials, while the media must be allowed easier access to public information, where civil servants are very often not forthcoming.
Our politicians need to be accountable for their actions while the media should be more dogged in its scrutiny of government, only then will public figures feel pressured by society to do the right thing – in the air or on the ground.
