Be wary of listening to influencers in the election campaign
I believe that the mission of an honest, competent columnist is to evaluate public figures and their actions and to castigate what the writer considers improper and questionable acts. In doing so, columnists are under an obligation to explain and substantiate their conclusions and must set them out without prejudice or malice. I boldly admit that I am annoyed by the behaviour of many “communicators”/”influencers”, who often distort reality for the sake of leading the recipients of their messages to erroneous conclusions and, by extension, to actions that are fundamentally different to the positions they would have otherwise taken.
Communicators and influencers have always existed but as a structured, recognised profession they are new on the scene. As a consequence, you can easily find professional consultants who for a fat fee are happy to take on the task of convincing you to go along with whatever their clients want you to believe, even if this process involves the distortion of facts, the dissemination of fake news and, more generally, the distortion of the truth.
The only defence ordinary people have against this is to follow developments with a large dose of skepticism and to challenge the messages transmitted by the influencers. In this game, journalists are called upon to play an important role by exposing the influencers. Unfortunately, we often see journalists becoming communicators and influencers themselves, simply because this serves their personal interests, ranging from their career advancement to the accumulation of large fortunes, as in the case of the late Greek journalist George Trangas.
After this somewhat lengthy introduction, let’s go back to Cypriot reality. My impression is that the communicators advising the presidential candidates Nikos Christodoulides (former foreign minister of President Nikos Anastasiades) and Andreas Mavroyiannis (former chief negotiator of the president) have advised their clients that the position they should project in the run-up to the elections is that they were obedient “servants” of their “master”. Although they disagreed with the orders they received, they were obliged to comply. It appears they are also claiming that unlike them Averof Neophytou, in his capacity as chairman of the ruling party, had the authority and the power to disagree with the president of the Republic and to force him to modify his decisions. Because he failed to do so he bears much greater responsibility than the other two for the impasse of the Cyprus problem and for the failure to combat corruption and collusion.
This position is incorrect. As I indicated in my article last Sunday, once someone is elected to the post of the president of the Republic, he becomes independent of the political party that supported his election, and it is up to his honesty and integrity to honour his pre-election undertakings. For a period of five years, the political party which supported the election of the president has no way of removing him from power. Disy has 17 out of a total of 56 deputies in the House of Representatives, resulting in an inability to pass a law without the support of the opposition. Where is the power of the Disy chairman to impose his views on the president of the Republic derived from? After all, according to the communicators and influencers, the president has absolute control over his puppet government.
With these thoughts in mind, I unreservedly reject the accusations of the communicators of the two presidential candidates that they do not have any responsibility for the mistakes that have been committed both in the field of managing the political problem and in the field of combating corruption and collusion, while claiming at the same time that Averof Neophytou is jointly responsible in this respect with the president of the Republic.
The problem I have with Averof Neophytou is a different one and focuses on the assurances he must provide to his potential voters that after his election he will stick to his promises and will not indulge in brainstorming, as his predecessor has done. If the question of what needs to be done was posed to me, I confess that I would have difficulty answering it. One form of a “guarantee” would certainly be the spelling out of his goals and how he will seek to attain these goals in his election manifesto. These references must be explicit and sufficiently detailed to allow the voter to judge not only the correctness of the goals set, but also the prospects of these goals being treated as compatible with the goals of the other players, who – whether we like it or not – are also involved in the game.
Unfortunately, many of our compatriots do not realise that the mere formulation of an ideal solution and the persistent refusal to accept painful compromises simply leads to the worst possible scenario. This is the perpetuation of the occupation ad infinitum, the complete Turkification of a large segment of Cyprus and the gradual emigration of all Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots to other lands that can provide an adequate level of security. It is well-known that the more competent young Cypriots are gradually moving and settling permanently in other EU member states and in the US. In other words, the era of “the solution with the right content” (where everyone could interpret the commitment made at will) is a thing of the past.
On the front of the fight against corruption and collusion, the problem can be easily tackled, because we have on the table the proposal of Panayiotides-Syrimis-Pissarides, which if adopted in its entirety will be a huge step in the right direction and will immediately generate tangible results.
Another form of a “guarantee” would be the seeking and securing of pre-election agreements between two or more presidential candidates on specific issues of vital importance (such as the Cyprus problem and the fight against corruption and collusion), without seeking a consensus on other issues (such as the economy) in relation to which their opinions are diverging.
I see an increasingly pressing need to formulate concrete and comprehensive proposals, both in the field of the Cyprus problem and in the fight against corruption and collusion, so that the voters can clearly understand where the aspiring presidents intend to take us. The era of “blank cheques” is a thing of the past. I am very happy that we have a long pre-election period ahead of us.
Christos Panayiotides is a regular columnist for the Sunday Mail and Alithia
