No time for complacency
E DII TO RII A L
Having secured his second term in office, President Nicos Anastasiades tried to portray himself in all his speeches on Sunday as the pacifier and reformer who will try to resolve all matters left outstanding from his first presidency – from the economy to the Cyprus problem.
He does not realise, though, that with two sets of elections over the next two years – Euro Parliament in 2019 and local parliament in 2020 – the opposition parties will be adamant to block his every move in order to drive their own message home and drum up support for their own team.
With the rest of the opposition parties in disarray, that only leaves the communist Akel as the main voice, with its experts suggesting that their candidate Stavros Malas did quite well in the second runoff, considering that no other parties supported him.
President Anastasiades is expected to announce a mini-reshuffle, holding on to key cabinet members who will continue with his economic development plan and civil service reform.
Judging from the images broadcast throughout the campaign and victory celebrations, the president had better increase the presence of female ministers in his cabinet, who do not necessarily have to hail from his own Democratic Rally (Disy). Besides, Anastasiades has on several occasions mentioned a ‘national social unity administration’. He will also have three new deputy ministers to appoint for shipping, innovation, and tourism and development. Hopefully, this time we will not have to wait for another five years to see these new departments taking shape, and get them up and running starting from March of this year, as promised.
On the economy side, President Anastasiades backtracked on many issues, such as the privatisation of the telco Cyta and power utility EAC, neither of which will go ahead in this five-year term either, due to the unions’ influence on voter numbers. But at least let’s see their division into commercial operators and the state remaining as infrastructure owner, as is the case in many other countries.
With the national health scheme now underway, the next item on the president’s agenda should be tackling the problem of the long-term unemployed, a vast segment of the working class who have experience and knowledge to offer, but with no jobs, as the incumbent administration chose to give incentives only for the recruitment of inexperienced university graduates, a programme that has not been perfect.
But the biggest challenge of all will be to try and keep the Disy leadership and courtiers out of meddling in government affairs, as has been the case in the past five years, often even undermining the president’s work. All be told, Anastasiades has shown his gracious side by eulogising the party leadership for his re-election success.
In fact, many voted by the tribal method, simply to keep the communist candidate out of the Presidential Palace, while the growing number of disenfranchised voters must be taken into consideration, if Anastasiades wants to be remembered as a leader who rebuilt the nation, not divided it even more.