SPEAKING on radio show recently, the Rector of the Cyprus University Costas Christofides fired a broadside against the political party system which dominates all aspects of public life and prevented people with real expertise from contributing to the formulation of government policy and decision-making.
There were many policy matters to which members of the academic community could have contributed fresh ideas or suggested alternatives, but they were never asked, he said. Politicians together with the top civil servants wanted to keep control and refused to allow outsiders into the policy formulation process.
The result was that all key jobs were monopolised by party people, regardless of their abilities and track record. These were people who had neither the knowledge nor the expertise to come up with original ideas and offer intelligent solutions to the countless problems facing the country. Instead they always stuck to the same old ways of doing things, refusing to acknowledge that we live in a rapidly changing world.
It is well known that Cyprus has one of the lowest – if not the lowest – contribution of GDP to research and development. Yet when it suits the government, they think nothing of spending a fortune to bring in ‘foreign experts’.
Other countries are not only way ahead of the R&D game but have increasingly come to recognise the value of evidence-based, rather than dogma-based policies. To do this you need experts in the field.
Britain for instance in the last decade established a Centre for Management and Policy Studies within the Cabinet. Its mandate is to ensure that government departments make better use of research and is funded to the tune of over one billion pounds per year.
Using research helps governments to make better-informed decisions and to produce sound policies based on available evidence. These experts are used in the fields of health, education, the labour market and the justice system among others.
Universities here are filled with experts in similar fields. Yet semi-government boards are filled with lawyers and accountants.
Christofides cited the state’s costly energy policy as an example of the malaise. There was been a revolution in energy production in the last decade, but Cyprus was still relying exclusively on oil for its power stations. Had the Electricity Authority and the Ministry of Commerce, displayed an open mind they would have explored the possibility of using solar energy. Cyprus University had staff that followed energy developments and could have offered new ideas, but they were never consulted.
Christofides said it was inconceivable to him that semi-government organisations did not have the option of listening to experts from the University of Cyprus. He said several electricity providers abroad use UCY professors as advisors “except our own”.
Perhaps then, the idea of using renewable energy sources would not have been treated with contempt by technocrats. Countries with much fewer hours of sun-light than Cyprus have invested hundreds of millions of euro in photovoltaic systems. Had the government ever considered the creation of big photovoltaic parks for the country’s energy needs? It considered a LNG terminal that would cost many hundreds of millions of euro and taken years to set up, but never looked at the option of photovoltaic parks.
This may have been a costly alternative, but did anyone do the arithmetic and factor in that we would not need to buy oil, we would not pay fines for carbon emissions and not have electricity bills fluctuating in accordance with the world crude oil prices? Now, with the Vassiliko power station in ruins, the perfect opportunity to explore the viability of such a project has presented itself.
But first the government needs to accept that outsiders with expertise should be brought into the policy formulation process. This may sound like wishful thinking under a government, which refuses to ask for policy advice from a Nobel-laureate, Cypriot economist, specialising in employment policy, at a time of record unemployment levels.
