Eleni Xenou
The thing that should give us pause, according to lectures given by the president of the Republic, is how best to keep political groups at an arm’s length when it comes to matters of the economy. Because as the president has enlightened us, since we simple folk could not have thought of this on our own, the Cooperative’s downhill was nothing but political parties having a hand in every election of every credit union at the committee level.
So, according to our “wise” president, we now have to reflect and ask ourselves about something that has always been at the core of a corrupt system where all government administrations got their hands dirty. But our president apparently believes that this tremendous discovery (more like, invention of the wheel) is something he needs to present to us as a new basis for reflection, by which somewhere, somehow, at some point it will guide this state to purge but not before those responsible for the collapse of the cooperative institution can be absolved of any political responsibility.
And the fact that this blatantly obvious political meddling in our banking system should never have to be reduced down to a mere reflection, apparently it does not even register as a cause for concern for our president.
So after he jammed such a tremendous sermon down our throats, the president made sure to clarify that the finding of the independent investigative committee was not without errors, reminding us that the cooperative institution was a “patient hooked up to a machine with all the vital organs destroyed” when he took over. This is the simplistic way our “wise” president wants us to process in our poor simple minds one of the biggest scandals in this country. Not to mention how the government is trying to pass the absurd as something normal.
And the political players take us so much for granted that they can utter unthinkable things with such ease without having the slightest concern that in a normal country these “theories” and “wisdoms” would not hold any water. On the contrary, they would have been sufficient basis for everyone to resign and go home before hooking up the patient to keep whatever could be kept in some sort of health.
If we are talking about a 'dead body' then how come a year earlier you and those geniuses up on the Hill were reassuring people
And because Mr president, as much as we may not look the part, we have a few brain cells that are still functioning, what troubles us the most is not the self-reflection exercise that you are recommending to us. We are troubled with why did we have to pay €2.5 billion out of our own pockets while you had a “dead body” in your care?
If we are talking about a “dead body” then how come just a year earlier you and those geniuses up on the Hill were reassuring people that there was sufficient capital over 15% to remain viable and that there was no cause for concern (for the dead body) while insisting that we should not have been paying attention to rumours about a collapse (of the dead body).
This is what troubles us and not those theories about keeping political groups away from matters of the economy. Because we still have the ability to discern on our own whether focusing on that kind of separation is just a red herring to help those, who kept telling us the “dead body” still had a chance to recover, as they try to come out clean on the other side. And for this rescue operation, you all had the audacity to reach your hands deep in our pockets.
This is what’s still troubling us
This is what’s still troubling us. The arrogance with which you all insulted our intelligence, where even after the probe finding of the committee your “wisdom” somehow was able to help you spot “errors” that essentially meant you were turning your back on institutions, the very ones you assured us so pompously that you were going to protect (these institutions must belong in the same category with those dead bodies worth rescuing).
And you are forgetting that through your government spokesman you were reassuring people that the €2.5 billion deposit would shield the Cooperative institution (which was already dead).
These are the things that are troubling us Mr president. And this is why we have to keep our focus on them, if we want to save those cells in our brain that you are so determined to erase.
The article was first published by Kathimerini Cyprus on 17 March 2019
