Our View: Slapdash approach comes home to roost

ANOTHER decision issued by the Supreme Court on Tuesday exposed the slapdash way in which many deputies perform their duties. It decided that a law, approved in 2007, allowing police to secure telecommunications data during serious crime investigations was unconstitutional. The House had adopted an EU directive on the matter, without taking any measures regulating how information relating to personal data would be obtained and used.

But the law was a blatant violation of an article of the constitution, which should have been amended before the law was passed. Only three years later, in June 2010, was the constitution amended by the legislature. However, all prosecution cases that were filed before last June and relied on telecommunications data obtained under 2007 law could not stand in court. Prosecutors could not use evidence obtained under an unconstitutional law. Trials in progress would now have to be declared mistrials and defendants free to walk.

And this because our overpaid, underworked deputies cannot perform their duties with any professionalism and a sense of responsibility.

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.