ALLEGATIONS that National Guard officers handling the purchase of arms from China had taken kickbacks once again raised the serious issue of the squandering of public money on what has been absurdly described as “defence shielding”. The allegations were first reported in Politis, which said earlier this week that a criminal investigation was currently under way.
What has been happening in Cyprus with regard to arms spending is truly outrageous. For 28 years, on the pretext of bolstering our defence capability, astronomical amounts of public money have been spent, draining the economy while providing us with no benefit whatsoever.
This defence charade began in 1977 under the presidency of Spyros Kyprianou, was stepped up under George Vassiliou (with Andreas Aloneftis as his defence minister) and was pursued with the same zeal during the Clerides years. The current government is no different from the rest even though it had to show restraint last year in its efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit – normal services have now resumed.
Since 1980, a sum in the region of £200 million was spent, on average, every year on the maintenance and purchase of all types of weapons, many of which became unusable after gathering dust in military depots for decades. In the last 25 years, the state has spent the astronomical amount of £5 billion on military equipment. This amount is the equivalent of our public debt.
During a series of articles I wrote back in the 1990s on the issue I described defence spending as a colossal scam. I argued, using facts and logic, that apart from the ransacking of state coffers by gold-fingered sharks who collected huge amounts of money in commissions no useful purpose was served. I concluded that the guns being bought would, under no circumstances, make the National Guard capable of substantively changing the outcome of a military confrontation in Cyprus – something that is still valid today.
I also remember that senior Greek officers who were serving in Cyprus, including the commanders of the Air Force and the Navy, contacted me to tell me that they agreed with my views and to give me additional information. What they told me was particularly revealing. It was along the following lines: “Your leaders are crazy. The only weapon you have is your economy. And you are ruining it for the sake of buying guns for an invisible army, an army which does not exist and which cannot be created in these circumstances.”
The arms-buying craze, at one stage, took on insane proportions. We ended up buying extremely expensive military hardware that was, emphatically, of no use to us. I am reminded of the Exocet missiles that cost us about £80 million. The then defence minister, Aloneftis, asked at a House committee meeting how the missiles would be used, said they could be deployed against Turkish ships in the event that Turkey decided to invade Limassol. I still remember the roaring laughter with which a senior National Guard officer reacted to my request for a comment on this explanation. “But the Turkish army has two divisions positioned outside Nicosia, and you fear that Turkish troops will land in Limassol? If a Turkish officer ever made such a suggestion they would put him in a straitjacket and send him to a mental hospital.”
All this came back to my mind in the last few days when I read the reports about the kickbacks from the purchase of the 84 Chinese artillery guns that will cost us £47 million – that is, half a million pounds each. And we are talking about a country the capital of which has a general hospital that resembles a dump, both outside and inside. We may have all types of missiles but our citizens, for decades, have had to go for treatment to this general hospital.
Imagine what we could have done with these £5 billion that were thrown away. President Papadopoulos has described the construction of the new Nicosia General Hospital, which went a few tens of millions of pounds over budget, as the biggest financial scandal in our history. I wonder how he would describe the scandal of our alleged defence capability which cost £5 billion.
