Disy deputy Kyriakos Hadjiyiannis was perfectly justified to censure President Nicos Christodoulides for his “highly unlawful” intervention in the setting of the electricity authority’s new tariff. The tariff increase of 7.5 per cent, which was requested by the EAC and is linked to the authority’s 10-year development programme, had been approved by the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority (Cera), but when the president was informed about this he stepped in.

Aware that he was exceeding his constitutional authorities, he stated that the EAC should not increase the tariff, given that households and businesses were already paying high rates for electricity. Nobody would accuse the president of abuse of power when his intervention was intended to protect consumers. Chastened by the presidential intervention, the chairman of the EAC, Giorgos Petrou, backtracked, saying that the authority could get by without the increase it requested and Cera had approved. But could it? Was the EAC joking when it asked for the 7.5 per cent increase?

This issue of the tariff increase is, strictly, between the EAC and Cera. The former submits the tariff increase request based on its forecasted expenses and its 10-year development programme which relates to capital investments. If Cera regards the increase as justified, it approves it as has happened with the 7.5 per cent. As Energy Minister George Papanastasiou said last week, only Cera has the authority to decide if the expenses claimed by the EAC to justify the tariff increase were ‘reasonable’. He said the president had not intervened, but his comment was just a ‘prompt’.

Yet the ‘prompt’ did not end there. According to Hadjiyiannis, after Cera indicated that a 3.5 per cent increase would be acceptable (if it gave its approval to 7.5 per cent how could it possibly reject 3.5 per cent)”it had been told not to announce anything.” The Disy deputy quite rightly pointed out that it was “illegal” to issue orders to Cera about what stand it should take. It is, after all, an independent institution that should be allowed to operate without presidential interference.

This absurd situation, by which the president is overstepping his powers to keep the already high electricity rates from rising further, is the result of decades of political incompetence, lack of planning, indecision and pandering to powerful unions. It is the politicians in cooperation with the EAC unions that protected the EAC monopoly, guaranteed it its annual surpluses, failed to import natural gas and ensured nothing changed. We are suffering the consequences of this irresponsible incompetence, consequences that will not disappear by presidential decree, lawful or unlawful.