Androulla Vassiliou’s comments on losing her police escort have sparked a row that says it all about a mindset that still treats holding office as an entitlement for life, one where the state owes former officials a permanent VIP service.
Vassiliou asked whether it’s “an honour” for the state that a former First Lady and former EU Commissioner should have to circle an embassy looking for a parking space. It never once crossed her mind to ask whether it’s honest, or even decent, for the Cypriot taxpayer to be footing the bill for her chauffeur.
Search for parking. Walk a few dozen metres. Sort out your own transport when you’re heading to an event. All perfectly normal, Mrs Vassiliou. What isn’t normal is treating it as a given that a police officer should be standing by to ferry a former official around. And if the actual problem is circling an embassy looking for a space, there’s a far simpler fix. A taxi. It’ll cost something, sure. But the person doing the travelling foots that bill, not the taxpayer, and not the state budget.
If this were about security, the conversation changes. If there’s a genuine threat, the state has a duty to protect the person at risk. No further discussion needed. But Vassiliou herself was clear: in her case, this isn’t about security. It’s about getting from A to B.
Public life simply cannot run on the logic of “I was somebody once, so the state owes me forever.” The state honours its former officials by recognising what they contributed. It doesn’t owe them privileges for life.
In a country where the police are meant to be tackling crime, staffing services, protecting critical infrastructure and responding to real threats, it’s a hard sell convincing the public that assigning an officer to chauffeur a former official around counts as a top state priority.
Cyprus is at a point where it needs to convince people it can be trusted with public money, spent properly and wisely. That’s not going to happen while citizens are reading about police officers reduced to acting as valet parking attendants.
