The ‘wrongs’ don’t add up to ‘rights’

AS THE National Unity Party (UBP) turned out this week to bay for the resignation of the government over the road flood deaths of four youngsters, factors in the December 5 tragedy are becoming clearer.

Although the 2010 UBP public works and transport minister, Gazimağusa MP Hamza Ersan Saner, was at the forefront of resignation calls, Mr Atakan’s predecessor and former UBP MP Kemal Dürüst was nowhere to be seen.

In the wake of the mountain road school bus disaster, Mr Dürüst, the then transport minister, signed the road project package with a Turkish contractor which included the ill-fated deal for the superstructure of the GirneLefkoşa road.

The exiting UBP even bemoaned leaving their “prize” road package project to the opposition coalition.

Mr Atakan, meanwhile, denied in his statement after last month’s tragedy that he had bowed to public pressure to speed up the opening of the revamped dual carriageway to end tailbacks.

It takes guts for a minister to commission a technical report and face the music — and calls from the opposition touting four deaths as political capital to aid their return to power are “cheap”.

Would that former UBP transport officials had simply got down to helping with the inquiry into a project of their making.

In this instance, all the “wrongs” do not add up to a “right”. We live on an island of double standards and inability to accept criticism, and the best tribute to the victims would be to break this mould.

However UBP, and indeed all political parties, would be better occupied rooting out those in their ranks, past and present, who condoned construction in riverbeds and giving government jobs to the unqualified. They might also spend time on finding a budget for compensation.

A huge state bill is accumulating for decades of turning blind eyes.

Insurance companies will no doubt exert pressure on the state when theirs come in and ministerial dreams of popularity will surely wane once demolitions begin.