CYPRUS’ politicians have never showed the slightest inclination for long-term planning and strategic thinking. They are much happier improvising policy and taking spur of the moment decisions if and when the need arises, avoiding thinking anything through or properly studying the consequences of their decisions. Most of the country’s woes are a direct result of this slapdash approach which never looks more than a few days, or perhaps a week, ahead and is motivated by shameless populism.
The Christofias government bankrupted the state because of this approach, the president refusing to take any measures – despite continual warnings from home and abroad – that could have led to a less harsh memorandum, if one was needed at all. Nothing illustrated this short- term thinking better than Demetris Christofias’ boasts in December 2012 – with the state technically bankrupt, a systemic bank insolvent and a deposits haircut on the cards – that he had ensured public employees would be paid a 13th salary.
His successor does not seem very different, also subscribing to the misguided notion of taking each day as it comes and not worrying about the longer term. In fact, he has repeatedly undermined the finance minister’s attempts to forge a long term action plan for the unsustainable, public sector wage bill, giving assurances to public employees that they would not need to make any more ‘sacrifices’ (as if they had made any).
He made this pledge when addressing a general meeting of the public employees’ union because on that day he wanted to pander to this group. The need to reduce the pay-roll over the next year or two was of no concern. The government decision, agreed with the troika, to tax the public employees’ retirement bonus in order to raise an additional €100 million, was abandoned by the president just after a brief meeting with PASYDY which strongly objected to it. The money would have to be raised from somewhere else as part of the ongoing improvisation of economic policy.
The above goes some way in explaining the presidential aversion to anything resembling a policy plan and long-term thinking. Commitment to a long term plan would severely restrict a president’s ability pander to public opinion and to dispense favours to interest groups, be they unions, big business or village communities demanding the building of a road. The dispensing of favours and responding to public demands seems the only way of practising politics for a Cypriot president.
The decision to ‘suspend’ his participation in the peace talks was another example of President Anastasiades’ impulsive decision-making. He had not considered the consequences of this decision nor had he given any thought to what he wanted to achieve. It just seemed the right thing to do because the media and the political parties were calling for strong a reaction, which in the Cyprus problem narrative is an end in itself. Anastasiades likes to pay lip service to the need for a settlement, but he obviously has no strategic plan for achieving it, otherwise he would not have quit the talks, setting conditions for his return that are unlikely to be satisfied.
But this unpredictable behaviour is fast becoming the president’s trademark. At the beginning of his presidency he made it clear that aligning Cyprus with the West would be a foreign policy priority, with NATO membership the ultimate objective. It appeared the government was steadily moving in this direction, the US government announcing a ‘strategic alliance’ with Cyprus, while Vice President Joe Biden visited the island to underline the importance the Americans attached to this alliance.
This strengthening of relations with the US did not go down well with the anti-West political establishment which kept warning that the government’s foreign policy shift as well as its support of EU sanctions had allegedly caused a strain in relations with Russia, our ‘traditional ally’. The government went out of its way the explain that it would do nothing to jeopardise the island’s alliance with Russia and tried to downplay the ‘strategic alliance’ with the US arguing that it was restricted to co-operation in combating terrorism.
Once Turkey issued the NAVTEX violating the Cyprus EEZ, the government immediately gave in to the public calls of the parties and the media to seek Russia’s help because the US was deemed an unreliable ally. It was another spur of the moment decision, of no practical benefit to the country and exclusively aimed at satisfying public opinion. Anastasiades abandoned his pro-West orientation rather than come under a little criticism.
Government by public demand may have destroyed the country but, depressingly, our presidents are incapable of running the country in a more rational way.
