THE LEVEL of public debate in Cyprus is cause for despair. Despite our free, state education, a very high number of university graduates as a proportion of population and a booming business sector, debate is still dominated by ruthless demagogues and opportunistic populists peddling half-truths, myths and prejudices.
This is why our society refuses to grow up and why very few people are prepared to accept responsibility for their actions and mistakes. The concept of accountability has still to reach our shores and so official incompetence, negligence and corruption are left to go unpunished most of the time, offenders protected by powerful unions or the mighty political parties. Quite conveniently, the demagogues blame foreigners and outside forces for all our woes, as we take the popular role of victims. Nothing ever seems to anybody’s fault in Cyprus, a view that is always reflected in public debate.
In the last four to six months, everyone has been harping on about the high prices of goods and services, how many families cannot cope financially and demanding that profiteering is made a criminal offence. The safe conclusion is that greedy capitalists are exclusively to blame for soaring prices. Nobody mentions that wages are increasing every six months, by much more than the rate of growth of productivity, thus fuelling price rises. When the Central Bank Governor did try to raise the issue he gave up after a concerted attack by a cross-section of our elite, including business leaders.
The desperate water situation is another case in point. Politicians blocked the building of the third desalination plant – planned by the Clerides government – on the grounds that residents of the coastal area where it would have been located were opposed to it. Parties voted against it in the legislature, without anything remotely resembling rational debate about the implications of this disgraceful decision. Needless to say nobody is to blame for the current catastrophic situation, to which, incompetent management of water resources, by the government departments, also contributed. But was there ever a public debate about the water shortage, before it became too late to do anything about it?
It is the same with the social insurance fund, which will not be viable within 10 years unless pension schemes are reformed and the retirement age in the public sector extended. But nobody is willing to engage in an honest debate, other than to declare opposition to every proposed change. Why are we not discussing the consequences of doing nothing and how people’s living standards would be affected? When it is too late, the government at the time will start introducing desperate measures that will be of little help.
This is what happens when nobody is prepared to have an open an honest debate about issues of importance to our society, for fear of saying something that people would not like. Problems get out of control before we start thinking about tackling them, the majority of the people are kept in a state of child-like bliss and our society neither develops nor matures. We are all happy to plead diminished responsibilities, refusing to entertain the idea of shouldering any blame.
This attitude is one of the main reasons the Cyprus problem remains unsolved. For years the super-patriotic demagogues have cultivated totally unrealistic expectations among the Greek Cypriots, and every time they failed to deliver they blamed foreign powers. But in the 34 years since the invasion there has never been an honest public debate about the type of settlement that could be achieved and the alternative options if this were not satisfactory. Even now, with direct talks in progress, most of our leaders are smugly predicting the failure of the process (what most people want to hear), without bothering saying what this would mean or what they proposed the president should do.
It is the familiar formula. Tell people what you think they want to hear and avoid discussion of unpalatable truths or words such as compromise or sacrifice, at all costs, until it is panic-time. And then we can all play the victims of outside forces and fate. It is a tidy little theory which has served our ruthlessly, opportunistic politicians well, but at a high cost for the country.
