AFTER a week’s silence, President Christofias finally spoke about deputy Attorney General Akis Papasavvas’ tooth implants at the weekend. Predictably, he avoided the real issues – the division of our society into first and second class citizens when it came to free healthcare and the way top state officials use their positions for personal benefit – despite arrogantly proclaiming that we “must respect the rules of operation of democracy”.
If he were a little less arrogant he would at least have acknowledged that the rules of operation of our democracy are discriminatory. He would have said something about the fact that state institutions do not treat all citizens as equal, a basic requirement of any properly functioning society. How can we all be equals when public employees are entitled to free medical treatment at home and abroad, irrespective of their income, while citizens employed in the private sector enjoy this right only if their combined family income is less than €22,000 a year?
A person who earns slightly more than this amount cannot even get a routine check-up for free but a state official on more than €100,000 a year can have teeth implants, costing €17,000, at the taxpayer’s expense. Are these the rules of the democracy that have to be respected? These rules are more reminiscent of the Soviet state, which provided the Communist Party nomenclature a host of privileges that the rest of the population could not even dream of.
Perhaps this is why Christofias, an unabashed supporter of the Soviet-style ‘democracy’, sees nothing wrong with the blatant discrimination practised by our State. He believes that the country’s ruling elite should be taken better care of by the state than the common man. On his election, he may have increased monthly pensions by a few euro, but in 2009 he decided a 50 per cent increase in the non-taxable ‘expenses allowance’ of all state officials, such as judges, commissioners and presidential aides. The rest of the citizens pay tax on any expense allowance they receive.
We will not even go into the joke of the ‘fairer society’ he promised to build, because for him, the Soviet Union, with its ultra-privileged elite, was a fair society. For the President, Papasavvas, as member of communist party’s ruling elite, was acting within his rights in charging the taxpayer for his implants. This was why he attacked Politis, claiming it had reported the story to “destroy” Papasavvas. “I do not agree with these methods, destroying people and personalities,” the president said, explaining that this “would cause the complete degeneration of political life”.
Since when is questioning the actions of those in authority a threat to political life? Is free speech not one of the rules of the operation of democracy that we must respect?
