FOR TWO days in a row this week, senior officials have bemoaned their inability to take action against known offenders.
On Monday, a top police officer said the force had received from Interpol a list of Cypriots known to be downloading child pornography from the internet. The police knew who these people were and where to find them, but could do nothing because possession of such material is not illegal in Cyprus. Worse, even if it was illegal, police would have little chance of conducting a successful prosecution because the current law of evidence would rule computer evidence inadmissible as hearsay.
On Tuesday, Justice Minister Doros Theodorou said the police knew the names, addresses and every movement of the linchpins of the drug trade in Cyprus. But they could not arrest them, because the current law of evidence made prosecutions impossible unless the suspects slipped up and were caught in flagrante.
Stock market prosecutions likewise have proved notoriously difficult to conduct because of the inadmissibility of documentary evidence and the need to bring in individual bank tellers to testify on every single transaction.
“As it stands, the law of evidence is protecting the criminal,” Theodorou said on Tuesday. On the evidence, you’d have to agree. But who is Doros Theodorou? He is not a newspaper columnist or a coffeeshop debater ranting and raving in the knowledge that nothing will change; he is the minister, he is the government. He has the power to initiate a change in the law. His government commands a majority in parliament.
And why does the government not act to change the law on child pornography? Is it right that a cannabis user is treated as a criminal, but where child pornography is concerned, only the supplier, the dealer is penalised, and not the user? Is it right that the use of drugs be penalised because it is bad for the user, but the use of child porn, which feeds the vile sexual exploitation of children, is seen as acceptable under the law?
Consecutive governments and generations of politicians in Cyprus have been very impressive in their handling of rhetoric (nice sound byte in front of the cameras, Mr Theodorou), but woefully vacuous in terms of serious policy programmes and drafting of legislation. Parliament apparently has no difficulty finding time to pass laws about the 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe or to conduct meaningless debate on the Cyprus problem. But it fails to tackle as sickening an issue as child pornography, and has failed – for whatever reason – to address the issue of the law of evidence, which both police and the justice ministry say is seriously hampering the war on crime.
To an extent, the need for European Union harmonisation has forced government and parliament to adopt hundreds of much needed reforms that would never otherwise have made it onto our statute books; but Europe cannot legislate on everything, nor would we want it to do so.
It’s about time our governments (of whatever political hue) began to govern instead of simply grandstanding. The sight of a minister standing up in parliament complaining about the law as if he were in opposition is simply grotesque. If there’s a problem, solve it. That’s what governments are for.
