Sometimes politics becomes a prisoner of politicians’ own populism. The pothen esches asset declaration is a textbook example. A rush for so-called transparency ends up as fodder for gossip, sniping and contempt for politics. The tragic part is that the politicians are still left exposed. Their sensitive data sits at the mercy of whichever House civil servant is tasked with posting each MP’s declaration online, and of that person’s professionalism.
Transparency and accountability are not achieved by having every MP and every official lay out their assets for all the world to see. And what exactly does that prove? What matters: what someone owns, or how they came by it? Owning two or three properties, whether inherited or bought with money earned through work, is not a problem. So why should that person be forced to bare their finances to every malicious busybody who leaps at the chance to rifle through what each state official owns?
What matters is scrutinising how every office holder acquires their assets from the day they take up the public office they are meant to serve.
What, after all, is scrutiny and transparency for? To stop the trading of favours, cronyism and the abuse of the position a person holds and is supposed to serve. Will any of that come to light through a declaration in which everyone notes whether they own a whole house or half a plot, and how much they paid for their car? Does it serve transparency to know that this or that MP or public official inherited three properties from their parents, and where they are? Or will it surface in a list of bank deposits?
Of course not.
There must be transparency, of course, and transparency requires accountability. There are mechanisms to guarantee both. They do not require everyone to put every last thing they own, or don’t own, on public display.
So much for the substance and the broader principle. This is an issue for parliament and its Institutions Committee to take up. The leak of personal and sensitive data earlier this week is a good opportunity to reflect and put things right. Enough of everyone dancing to the tune of every populist out to strut and preen. Do some people really not see that this undermines political life and, by extension, democracy itself?
Why would a successful entrepreneur, a scientist, or even just an accomplished professional want to go into politics? To be thrown to the social media mob? Or is it a coincidence that we are now sliding into political squalor? We are hurtling towards a dictatorship of mediocrity, vanity and sheer stupidity. Sadly, that is the reality of political life today.
That said, the House President was quite right to call for an investigation and a report on the facts. Responsibility must be established and assigned. “Sorry, my mistake” no longer cuts it. Everyone answers for their own actions.
Irene Charalambides is also right in what she says in her letter to the party leaders’ meeting. Giorgos Pamborides, too, is right in what he said about populism and about the criminal liability that must be pursued.
