IT IS BECOMING rather tiring hearing the stock responses of the government spokesman and the president’s AKEL cheerleaders to criticism of Demetris Christofias’ inept administration. Everything that is said is dismissed as an attempt to hurt and undermine the president, as if he should be above criticism and all his decisions, however misguided applauded, for the sake of his political standing.
It is a rather simplistic and antiquated approach to politics that reflects the old-school communist thinking embraced by Christofias who sees himself as a father of the nation figure deserving unquestioning support from everyone. Apart from having done nothing to deserve such a status, he and his advisors must know that the cult of the leader, which operated in the Soviet satellites, cannot be imposed in a free and democratic country. A president’s actions are not guaranteed support and acceptance by virtue of his position, as Christofias seems to believe.
In the last week AKEL has gone on the counter-offensive with party leader Andros Kyprianou firing salvos against those “attempting by persistence and distortions a blatant full frontal attack on the party.” Attacks on Christofias were attacks on AKEL, decreed Kyprianou. He told a big party gathering on Wednesday that “it is a challenge for them (president’s critics) to hurt, undermine and weaken AKEL, but it is as much a challenge for us to prevent them from achieving their objective.”
Inevitably he called on the party faithful to rally round Christofias and “defend the interests of Cyprus, its people and the workers”. The message of this rousing speech was pretty clear – only Christofias knows what the interests of Cyprus and its people are. The defender of the workers needed to be protected from “certain circles who attempt to destroy every positive step made by Cyprus and Cypriot society during the Christofias presidency,” Kyprianou told a meeting last Sunday. He also called on party members to go from door to door to reverse the negative climate against the government, being created by certain political parties and a section of the media.
The cultivation of a siege mentality is an effective way to rally the party support, even if it betrays a degree of desperation on the part of Christofias, who is obsessed with his popularity and approval ratings. Both were significantly down in a recent survey, which explains the mobilisation of the communist troops. What the president and his AKEL aides fail to realise is that this behaviour is undermining the unity Christofias craves, albeit on his terms, by creating an ‘us against them’ atmosphere in society.
The class struggle rhetoric, about the ‘haves and the have-nots’ and projection of Christofias as the guardian angel of the workers, by AKEL’s leadership could only cause deep divisions. But the party needs to put an ideological gloss on the president’s patent failure to take any decision involving cuts in the public sector wage bill, the only effective way of reducing the budget deficit. He has gone as far as to lump the parasitical labour aristocrats of the public service together with the workers of the private sector in order to strengthen his class war platitudes.
When he drives the state to the brink of bankruptcy, he could always argue that he did it for the sake of the workers. Such arguments were made by Kyprianou in his speech last Sunday – he listed the increases in state handouts decided by the ‘people-friendly’ president last year, when we were already in recession and state spending should have been cut instead of increased. The AKEL boss did not mince his words on Sunday, announcing that the party “is the force that is preparing society for qualitative change and should be ready to lead society forward – to socialism.”
This ineptitude at managing the economy is a big step towards socialism indeed. Socialism is synonymous with failed economic models which Christofias is going out of his way to achieve with his bungling and indecision. It is his failure as a president which is being attacked because he is proving incapable of meeting the challenges of these difficult times for the country. And he is deluding himself if he believes that by championing the interests of the workers and turning society against the capitalists he will deflect attention away from his dangerously ineffective administration.
