A COUPLE of weeks ago, the head of the Energy Service at the commerce ministry, Solon Kassinis, publicly took credit for persuading the president to give the go-ahead for the start of drilling in Plot 12. Kassinis supposedly threatened to go public about the president’s prevarication over the start of the drilling, thus forcing Christofias to put aside his fears of a Turkish reaction.
The technocrat was out of order. Who did he think he was, imposing his wishes on the president, then boasting about it in public and playing the national hero? It was outrageous behaviour, both from a constitutional and a professional point of view, as Kassinis is a civil servant with no authority to take decisions that could impact on national security and foreign policy. But such is his arrogance and love of publicity that he could not see this.
His political superior, however, Commerce and Industry Minister Praxoulla Antoniadou, quite rightly decided that Kassinis was exceeding his authorities and decided to put an end to it. She rescinded the executive decision that gave authority to Kassinis and another five of the officials at his departments to handle issues relating to hydrocarbons and the Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ). These authorities had been given to the Energy Service in 2007, in order to speed up procedures and eliminate the time-consuming government decision-making process which had to go through a series of committees.
Ms Antoniadou’s predecessors were happy with this arrangement as it reduced their workload, but this did not mean she had to accept it as well. She explained she did not want to have the responsibility for decisions taken by others. As she had the political responsibility, she wanted to take the decisions as well. It was a perfectly reasonable position which, nevertheless, was portrayed by the opposition as a sinister government plot to get rid of the great expert Kassinis.
The reality though is that the government restored a rational administrative practice by depriving a group of technocrats of the final say on decisions of national importance. The minister, quite rightly, will now have the final say on issues relating to hydrocarbons and the EEZ, after consulting Kassinis and the rest of the technocrats at the ministry.
Surely this is the rational way government should work and not the other way round as opposition politicians misleadingly claim. Energy policy is too broad and important an issue to be carried out by technocrats, accountable to noone. This practice may have suited some ministers, but for Ms Antoniadou it was not acceptable, and she had every right to put an end to it.
