The day the street opened

For a journalist there’s nothing quite like witnessing and being part of an historical event, and the one that sticks out most in 2008 was the opening of the Ledra Street crossing point. After writing about it for more than two years, it finally happened on April 3. Although it was all a bit of an anticlimax compared to the first surprise opening at the Ledra Palace in April 2003, it was still an important moment for Nicosia and for Cyprus.

The most exciting part – from a journalistic perspective – came later in the evening when the crossing was closed temporarily. That was the real news of the day. I had been standing between the two sides of the crossing about an hour before, watching the Turkish Cypriot police officers strolling up and down where they were not supposed to be, and I remember thinking they shouldn’t be doing that and it was bound to cause trouble at some point. One of the joys of covering the Cyprus issue for 15 years is being able to second-guess the reactions of both sides when their buttons are pushed by the other. Happily the spat was temporary and the crossing reopened a couple of hours later.

There was a second story in 2008 that had a more personal feel. Normally bad news nearly always gets the headlines so when I was contacted about a story involving an expat who was dying of cancer and couldn’t get the free treatment he was entitled to due to incompetence and lack of knowledge of EU laws, bells started ringing over the injustice.

After three or four days of pestering officials, including the health minister, persistence paid off and it turned out the man was actually entitled to the free treatment, which saved him and his family a lot of grief and financial worry. Kudos to Health Minister Christos Patsalides for not ignoring the case, and for appointing someone knowledgeable to look into it.

I thought I would end this with a worthy quote about the importance of the profession and what it can do to help society and keep a check on government misbehaviour. Instead I learn that the majority of public opinion dictates that we are all sleazebags and liars. It’s a tough life. Happy New Year.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.