WHEN in July the Council of Ministers appointed the well-respected lawyer Polys Polyviou as a one-man committee to investigate the political responsibilities for the Mari blast, it was taking an unprecedented step. It was voluntarily putting the cabinet and the President of the Republic under investigation, something that had never before happened in Cyprus.
On the day the appointment was announced President Christofias declared that the committee had instructions to investigate the ‘highest echelons of power’, including the president, in order to establish who was politically responsible for the Mari disaster. Christofias, to his credit, even agreed to appear before the committee and give his version of events, which was another unprecedented step. Never before had a serving president agreed to appear before an investigative committee.
Would he have given the committee such a free hand, had he suspected for a moment that the main political responsibility would be placed on him and that Polyviou would not accept the claims of complete ignorance about the containers, cited by Christofias in his defence? Although we cannot answer the question with certainty, it is highly unlikely any politician would sign his own death sentence, which was what Christofias, with the benefit of hindsight, appeared to have done by giving Polyviou such a powerful role.
Polyviou’s report was a damning indictment of the man that appointed him. He concluded the report, which was presented yesterday, as follows: “The essence of the matter is that the President of the Republic, in the case under investigation, failed to make arrangements, or at least take the basic steps for the safety of the citizens of the Cyprus Republic, especially soldiers and firemen.
“I emphasise, make it clear and conclude that I am not only referring simply to institutional political responsibility, deriving from a public post, which always exists. In this case I allocate very serious political responsibilities to the President of the Republic for the tragic event and its consequences.”
This was not an ‘undocumented’ conclusion as AKEL officials claimed on television chat shows yesterday, ignoring the testimony collected by the committee and the 600-plus pages of documentation included in the report. This was after all an investigation to establish political, not criminal, responsibilities for the disaster; the foreign minister, defence minister and command of the Fire Service were also found culpable by the report.
If anything, Polyviou should be congratulated for the clarity and directness of his report which was another first for Cyprus. Never before have the findings of any public investigation been so clear-cut and not subject to a variety of interpretations. So much so, it will have come as a very big shock to the state apparatus which has never been accustomed to such treatment in the past.
The big question now, is how Christofias will react, considering that he said he would respect the findings of the report and accept the political responsibility that it placed on him for the disaster? There were several calls for his resignation yesterday and although, constitutionally, he cannot be forced to step down, he may eventually realise that the report has made his position untenable.
