The big day is approaching. I confess I’m eager. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. To devour it breathlessly. To learn the truths. For abundant light to finally shine on this land. I look at my calendar noting the landmark date: 20th March. This coming Thursday.
I’m referring to the publication that I’m sure the whole society is waiting for: “The Slanderer.” By Nicos Anastasiades, who has already gone down in history as the most renowned President worldwide of this unfortunate state. Who now aspires to become famous as an author too. Not on the level of Hans Christian Andersen or Cervantes, who wrote fairy tales and novels like fairy tales (Don Quixote). But on the level of Dostoevsky, with comparable works like “Crime and Punishment.”
No, I didn’t see him in my dreams. Fortunately, I don’t have nightmares. I simply watched an interview he gave to colleague Aimilia Kenevezou. And since Justice will not deal with the crime of disgracing a nation, all we can do is respond to each provocation from the former President.
The reason why, for the umpteenth time, we are forced to deal with him is the realisation that he’s trying to erase – or so he thinks – every stain from the presidential suit he wore and has now stored away in some wardrobe.
It’s not just writing a book to answer Drousiotis’s accusations. It’s his entire attitude at every opportunity. And his argumentation, which demonstrates his attempt to pass through a makeshift purgatory.
What did he do in the interview? When the journalist raised the major issue of Cyprus being disgraced by the enormous golden passport scandal, he tried to minimise the scale of the damage. To this end, he invoked events from previous administrations. Specifically, he referenced the Milosevic case during Tassos Papadopoulos’s presidency and Assad’s ship carrying ammunition, which ultimately led to the Mari tragedy, during Demetris Christofias’s term.
The man failed to understand that any past events, however serious, cannot function as absolution for any subsequent wrongdoing. Nor did he realise that no case from the past, whether valid or not, however serious, caused the enormous damage that this particular scandal caused during his administration.
Before reminding him why the disgrace during his governance is incomparably greater, we should point out that his current stance is becoming more provocative. Because he apparently forgets what he was forced to do on 6 February 2021, under the weight of enormous pressure from society.
When he was compelled to acknowledge the great misstep and say mea culpa. He did this eight years after taking office and implementing the “golden” passport programme. Six years after the first legal opinion from the Law Office (under Costas Clerides) that the government was breaking the law with these naturalisations. Five years after the EU began warning that the programme’s implementation contravened its regulatory framework. At least two years after numerous foreign publications disgraced Cyprus and focused personally on the President of the Republic, while he spoke of slander and myths. Eight months after the video of shame.
“I do not hesitate, with frankness, to apologise and ask the people’s forgiveness for our mistakes,” he said then. Yesterday, however, he attempted to soften his sins by invoking the sins of others. He also tried to romanticise the golden passport programme, emphasising that it benefited the economy. Meanwhile, he referred to his masterpiece “The Slanderer,” where he will explain (as he mentioned) how the programme operated and how applications were approved.
But we know very well how the programme operated. It’s detailed in the Nicolatos Committee’s findings. His government approved 6,546 golden passports, of which 53% were illegal! How they approved applications is also clear. As a minister testified to the same Committee (tick-tick and they were approved).
The Nicolatos report also records the conflict of interest in approving passports through his former law firm and through his ministers’ firms. Approving passports for a family business interest in another country would have sent him home overnight.
We must, of course, refresh his memory further. He cannot compare the crime during his administration with any other. Because countless foreign publications referred to him personally as President of the Republic, simultaneously disgracing our country. They even went so far as to refer to him as an “offshore president”!
Abroad, we were compared to the Cayman Islands. Netflix made us “famous” with the film “The Laundromat.” The case of the Saudi Arabian friend and the trips to Seychelles would have sent him into exile in any other country. Indeed, we could write numerous books with everything written and said inside and outside Cyprus about the notorious scandal.
However, Nicos Anastasiades assures us that in his “Slanderer” he will answer everything. What he continues to miss is one thing: that we care little about what he’ll say to Drousiotis. It will hardly change the facts we know and have experienced. And, unfortunately, it will hardly clear our country’s name. After all, his political offspring, Christodoulides, exposes him irreparably as he will pay dearly for Cyprus’s rebranding.
No book will lift you from the bottom, Nicos Anastasiades! Especially when in “Crime,” “punishment” is absent…
