It’s all about trust, stupid!

E DII TO RII A L

Campaign posters are up, candidates are racing from one TV channel to the other, radio shows are overwhelmed by their supporters and everyone seems himself (there are no female candidates) as the saviour of the Cypriot people, a gift from God, with magic tricks in their hats that will solve all problems, get the flow of natgas flowing and make us all rich.

The trouble is, none of the names running for office in the January 2018 elections seems worthy of our vote. Most important, none are convincing and a sense of leadership has abandoned their agendas, replaced by a greed for power. This, in turn, has created a feeling of apathy among voters, rightly saying “why vote for these goons?”

The incumbent President Nicos Anastasiades seems to have lost the momentum and popular support that put him in office nearly five years ago, unable to keep his promises, and when delivering on some of these, decisions coming too late. Of course, he has had little support from the ruling Democratic Rally (Disy) party, that needed almost five years to realise that it was no longer in opposition. Perhaps, in six months’ time they will return to that position, with the party’s current leadership equally unconvincing of its genuine interest in a plethora of subjects.

The candidate with some hope of getting elected is Stavros Malas, the communist-Akel favourite, whose name was pulled out of dusty closet and has been out of the limelight for the past five years, when he was last in the running and lost the deciding round to the incumbent president. Perhaps, party leader Andros Kyprianou would have been a better candidate, but he, too, has little chance of winning, as the communist party’s disastrous handling of the economy in the previous five years will haunt them for a generation.

Then, there are the pair of hopeful, albeit younger in age Nicholas Papadopoulos and Yiorgos Lillikas, driven by their ambitions to ascend to the presidential throne, who have little to offer in a change of national policy that will get us out of the current impasse with Turkey, have nothing fresh to suggest in reviving the economy and are hardly attractive to new voters.

This means that Cyprus needs a new leader, a fresh face to run for office, with a transparent agenda, one who seems to be unblemished by baggage from the past, one who will show initiative, will inspire a disappointed society, and who will have no fear in challenging the system, be this the stranglehold of public and private sector trade unions, the growing incompetence and inefficient civil service and corruption that has become the rule of day, as if Cyprus was a Third World country (in many cases it still is).

In the absence of new candidates coming forward (note: “new” does not necessarily mean “young”), perhaps voters should turn to Phedonas Phedonos, the firebrand mayor of Paphos who has no fear of coming face-to-face with the establishment, challenging government officials, civil servants and private sector entrepreneurs, simply because he wants to place “Paphos first”, a theme reminiscent of Trump’s successful “America first” campaign in the U.S. last year.

And had our Constitution allowed it, Phedonos’ running mate should have been Auditor-General Odysseas Michaelides, who has left no stone unturned and uncovered more dirt than public officials have tried to cover up.

These two are names that the public trust. And that is key in convincing the voters and getting elected.