Our View: Too much talk makes people not listen

A day rarely passes by without President Christodoulides talking publicly. Apart from the speeches he makes at events he attends almost daily, he also answers journalists’ questions, while arriving at or leaving from these events. This can happen twice in a day.

Apart from constantly repeating himself, which is unavoidable as he cannot have something new to say every day, he often acts like a news commentator, offering speculation on issues of public interest. In the previous week, he gave two extended interviews, while on his arrival in New York he gave news conference, answering questions to journalists from Cyprus that accompanied him on the trip.

In order to say something new, he told journalists that Tuesday’s meeting between the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan would “determine the UNSG’s next moves regarding the Cyprus issue.” Speaking as a political commentator, he said he considered this meeting “the most vital with regard to how things will develop in the Cyprus problem.”

When the president talks in public as often as Christoulides does he has to engage in speculation. Yet such speculation, which may prove completely off the mark, should be left to the government spokesman, because the president should speak with authority about issues and only when this is justified.

This is the problem with Christodoulides’ habit of making public statements every day. There is overkill. Most people will have come to the point of suffering presidential fatigue, just six months into his term in office, listening to him every day or seeing his comments featuring in newspapers and news websites. Before long, the point will come when nobody will listen.

Being in the public domain every day may have served Christodoulides well when he was building his political profile as spokesman and, subsequently as foreign minister. But he is the president now, the head of state, who does not need to remind people of this by speaking every day. People will not forget who their president is if he fails to speak in public for a few days, nor will they think any less of him for this.

On the contrary, people are more likely to listen to what the president has to say, if his public statements were not a daily occurrence. In the past, a president would speak when he had something meaningful and of importance to say and people paid attention because this was not a regular occurrence.

The former president, Nicos Anastasiades, changed all this by speaking frequently in public, but Christodoulides has taken it to another level. The sad thing is that little of note is said. How could it be when someone talks in public every day? He will eventually run out of anything meaningful to say and resort to platitudes and speculation that nobody would listen to.