THOSE who are old enough will remember the classic BBC TV sketch from the mid-1960s about class entitled, ‘I know my place’, starring the Two Ronnies and John Cleese. This involved 6ft 5inch Cleese standing next to 5ft 8inch Ronnie Barker, who in turn stood next to 5ft 1inch Ronnie Corbett, and, using each man’s height, illustrated their relative standing in British society.
What is class in Cyprus, a Merc, tooth implants, dyed hair, big boobs and stick on tinselled fingernails? Judging by the number of flash motors on the streets and palatial homes dotted about the suburbs, our tax free so called middle and upper classes are compulsive show offs. It doesn’t matter how much they earn, most spend beyond their means to maintain an illusory and lavish lifestyle.
Professing class when devoid of culture or intellect is the biggest calamity to hit Cyprus since fast food, and the cause of immense stress and unhappiness. Driving better cars, building bigger homes, dressing better and being seen in the ‘right’ places with the ‘right’ people has become the rule rather than the exception for the sons and daughters of our peacock peasantry. Members of this ‘elite’ then employ backhanders or whisper their wishes in a highly placed official’s ear, secretly sharing out the now rotting Cypriot cake.
But there is a price to pay for favours, one which aspiring social climbers struggle to meet. Taking out bank loans, mortgaging property, even – like Faust – your soul all in an effort to keep up appearances eventually bankrupts not only our finances but our esprit de corps as well. It’s the way of all hierarchies which employ rusfeti and not suitability as a means to advancement.
A renowned doctor, who spent years faithfully practising his vocation in England, returned to Cyprus, got married, had two daughters and bought land in the sticks on which to build houses for the gals. So far was this land from mains services that he was obliged to pull strings at the Water and Electricity Board in exchange for offering his services free of charge to a number of highly placed, overweight and diabetic government officials. To finance palatial construction he doubled his tax free fee to ‘normal’ patients.
One of those highly placed diabetic officials then went into business in the company of a daughter of a former top politician and several of her ‘acquaintances’. He was expected to feature in the Hilton Hotel lobby and bar most evenings in their company, taking out one bank loan after another to finance what became a disastrous business venture. His €150,000 golden handshake on retirement and part of his huge and undeserved pension were employed to pay back those bank loans – easy come, easy go!
Participating in peer group pressure is the downfall of the ill informed and poorly educated. A university degree is only the key to the door, which when opened requires determination and real talent today in order to succeed in one’s chosen career. The civil or public service in Cyprus is not a career but a cemetery for the lazy, untalented and spoon-fed indifferent Cypriot, who seeks to grow fat at the expense of the taxpayer.
Many top civil servants accept bribes in exchange for influencing dispensation of lucrative contracts. Bribery is not endemic to Cyprus alone. It is claimed that Turkey leads the bribery league followed closely by France, Germany and the USA – armaments and aircraft, etc. Bribery and corruption broke the back of the Greek economy.
We are all given to believe that civil servants are ‘la nouvelle aristocratie’. But what we may not realise is that most are so overextended in loans and payments in kind that they struggle to make ends meet. Easy access to loans stigmatises rather than simplifies lifestyles – one loan begetting another until the borrower is obliged to condone corruption, which when uncontained causes the collapse of any economy.
Most paint their concrete palaces white, symbolic of purity and the chosen colour of schizophrenics, although white is not technically a colour. Neither is black, yet few appointments to high office in Cyprus are black and white.
Rusfeti has given us the ruling class we deserve and in the process denied the talents of many young, hopeful and well qualified Cypriots, forcing the wisest abroad.
How many of our civil servants know their place? How many even deserve to be where they are today, perpetuating this den of iniquity we call the Republic of Cyprus administration? Until this present generation of poorly qualified and corrupt old fogeys are retired off and replaced by suitably qualified and incorruptible younger Cypriots, this island’s judiciary and administration will forever struggle to hold its head high.
Bored watching yet another toothless defence of blatant misappropriation by our deputy Attorney-general, I zapped unwittingly to M.TRT4 Canli and was both surprised and enchanted by Sinan Ozen, a Turkish singer/songwriter – what a voice! The show was broadcast from Ankara and to my TV here in Nicosia via the ‘TRNC’, another so called den of iniquity.
Music, play on and help calm these troubled waters, while I search for a man who loves his country above himself and displays true class by putting it before himself.
