THE PRESIDENT’S outburst against the Rector of the Cyprus University, Costas Christofides, during a graduation ceremony last Friday, was very difficult to comprehend, despite AKEL’s subsequent efforts to justify it. The truth is there was no justification for his aggressive tone and the shaking of his finger at the Rector, as if the latter was a naughty school-boy, in need of telling off.
His reaction to Christofides’ excellent speech which urged graduates to “question the establishment, question the older generation, question your teachers” because “through questioning society advanced,” did not even make any sense. The Rector’s words were not directed at the president, but at the political system. “The next generations deserve something better; they deserve more democracy and more accountability.” They even saw the Mari explosion, not as an excuse to attack Christofias, but as “an opportunity, from the events of the summer, to build something entirely new, healthier and more modern.”
This why it was so difficult to comprehend the president’s claim, that “I cannot stand provocation.” What provocation had there been? As for his other claim, that he did not like being subjected to “abusive and aggressive criticism,” when he was invited as the guest of honour, defied belief. He had neither been provoked nor subjected to abusive criticism, but still felt obliged to reprimand the Rector in this uncalled for way.
The press castigated Christofias’ outburst, attributing it to his intolerance of any form of criticism. Even the mildest questioning of his decisions was a “provocation” that “undermined the institution of the presidency”. The AKEL propaganda machinery immediately went to work, the party mouthpiece publishing a host of articles attacking the Rector and arguing that the president had every right to express his view during the ceremony. Christofides “served party agendas” and was a DISY supporter who “was not guided by purely scientific motives,” said the AKEL students’ organisation.
This was not so much criticism but an attempt to intimidate the Rector. It was AKEL and the president who had an agenda and used Christofides’ speech as pretext to attack and intimidate him. In the days after the Mari blast, the Rector frequently attended the demonstrations outside the presidential palace and publicly spoke out against Christofias’ failure to take any responsibility for the tragedy that killed 13 people. This was the provocation and abusive criticism that Christofias was really referring to on Friday.
The president, it seems, neither forgives nor forgets those who cross him, but he chose the wrong place and time to settle the score with the Rector. It is this type of petty-minded, vindictive behaviour by the president which undermines the institution of the presidency and not criticism by the opposition.
