Time for Democracy (Part 2)
THE LAST batch of the Madman’s ravings was a couple of weeks back. The Madman apologises for the disruption. It was caused, indirectly but certainly, by the Easter holidays: the Madman stayed away from his network for four days, enjoying Roman Empire Week on local TV. Even the pseudostation got into the spirit and broadcast Gladiator on Good Friday. Deprived of access to his workstation, he promptly fell ill with withdrawal.
In that previous instalment of rantings from the padded cell (a.k.a. Network Operations Centre), it was argued that for our political life to be so obviously ailing, democracy and the rule of law must be somehow failing, and the reason is that several Estates are blatantly usurped by the political parties.
The fact that the boards of directors of public institutions like the CyBC, CyTA, the EAC and the Ports Authority are appointed from lists provided by the parties, in strict proportion to the parliamentary representation of each party, was cited as one example of the legislature usurping executive powers, and bringing them under party control. It was also stated that the omnipresence and omnipotence of the political parties has become such a permanent feature of the landscape that we have mostly ceased to take notice.
Since then, Dr Vassos Lyssarides has suggested that the solution to the rampant mismanagement and nepotism within the Co-operative movement, recently exposed by the Auditor-general’s report, is to apply the same rule to the boards of directors of the Co-operative Societies: appointment from party lists in direct proportion to parliamentary representation. How long before the parties decide to apply the same rule to the commercial banks? And if, within the scope of the proposed General Health Plan, hospitals too acquire Boards of Directors, will the parliament not demand that the same rule apply?
How long before they also ask that loans be granted to bank customers in strict proportion to the parliamentary representation of the political parties they support? How long before patients are admitted to hospitals on the same basis? Will it become impossible to have one’s appendix removed, or get finance to buy a house or car, unless one is a card-carrying party member? A particularly cynical individual might well point out that this has been happening for years in the Co-operative Societies and the state-run hospitals. A friend’s joke that Cyprus resembles more the “real, existing socialism” of the defunct Iron Curtain regimes than a member state of the European Union takes on a new, terrifying significance.
It could be pointed out as counter-argument that political parties concern themselves with legislative and executive affairs in many countries whose political systems bear no resemblance whatever to banana republics or one-party ‘people’s republics’. But a cursory comparison of the extent of party influence will be instructive. The Cypriot political parties are in a different class altogether to political parties in such countries, deserving, like the Nietzschean superman, of a different name to their less endowed counterparts: überparty. For how else can one describe an entity that has extended to engulf not just political life, but also, to mention just a few, the Civil Service, the Trades Unions, schools, universities, people’s work and careers, football, and even national identity (‘Greek’ vs ‘Cypriot’)?
Let’s not dwell on the symptoms. Having made a diagnosis of the cause, we must start searching for a cure. And once the diagnosis has been made, the cure is derived by inspection. The überparties are the scourge of democracy, the bane of freedom of expression, freedom of professional conduct, freedom of choice, of change, of progress. Therefore the überparties are the enemy and the überparty system must be dismantled, its powers returned to the estates, and the popular mandate re-established.
But how is the power of the überparties to be eroded? To answer that question, we must ask it differently: where do the überparties get their power from, that it can be cut off at source? Are not democratic elections by secret ballot carried out in this country? Do the voters not have ultimate power over the parties? Do they not have a choice?
So it is that we can examine elections in Cyprus from a new perspective. They are the first recourse of the citizen who wishes change, and could therefore be part of the cure for the überparty cancer. But there must, almost by definition, be something fundamentally wrong with them for the überparties to still be in existence. So what is wrong with our elections? Can they be used to destroy the überparties and bring about change? Why has this not happened already? We will seek the answers in the next load of psychobabble from the machine room. Stay tuned.
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