IT IS the only way to travel.
You don’t have to wait with the common folk in the departure lounge, you are spared the indignity of squeezing onto the coach for the short trip to the airplane steps. Instead, you get to wait in a luxuriously appointed lounge with the select few. You sip the drink offered by a helpful airport employee before being ferried to the airplane in a special car.
On your return from your sojourn, you are met at the aircraft steps by the same car and taken to the same luxurious, spacious, lounge to sip a cocktail while the airport employees collect your luggage from the carousel and have your passport stamped for you. Not for you the long queues at passport control and the struggle with the luggage cart with the dodgy wheel.
It’s called VIP treatment, reserved for those “Very Important Persons”. Except that, in Cyprus, almost everyone and their uncle gets to be a VIP.
Politis newspaper yesterday published an exhaustive list of those entitled to this special treatment at our airports.
The list begins, as you would expect, with the President and his family, the Archbishop, Cabinet Ministers, visiting heads of state and ministers and the heads of foreign diplomatic delegations. But the list then goes on, and on, and on.
It includes all senior government officials, all House of Representatives deputies, foreign “personalities” given the nod by the Foreign Ministry, party leaders, former Presidents and former House presidents, senior judges and former senior judges, “church leaders” and the directors-general of all Ministries. There is an approved list of company directors entitled to VIP treatment when travelling on state business. There is also a catch-all category covering “special personalities” whose names are put on the list by the cabinet.
In total, 43 categories of persons are counted as VIPs.
All this is in stark contrast to arrangements at European airports. True, in Britain, privately run airports mean you can, if you have the cash to spare, pay to receive a VIP reception. But the Foreign Office will generally only pay you the compliment of footing the bill for you to get the red carpet treatment if you are a Minister or better.
What’s more, according to senior government sources quoted by Politis, the problem in Cyprus does not end with the length of the list. Apparently, local VIPs routinely demand, and get, similar preferential treatment for their family members. The two persons employed to tend to VIPs’ every need at Larnaca airport routinely have to be upped to three or four to cater for these “extra” VIPs-by-association.
There was no official comment on this VIP bonanza yesterday.
The Foreign Ministry’s protocol department was less than forthcoming on the issue. The Cyprus Mail was told that only the departmental head could possibly comment on VIP arrangements at the island’s airports, and he was not in.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
