Thanasis Photiou
Socrates Hasikos once told me, on a February morning in 2015, as he sat behind his ministerial desk, half-joking and half-serious: "I've told Anastasiades this...Mr. President, you've set the bar for ethics so high that in the end, we may end up walking underneath it."
Years later, that remark sounds almost prophetic.
Because the political assessment of the Anastasiades decade will not ultimately be defined by inquiry reports, investigative committees, court proceedings or partisan battles. It will be judged by something deeper: the public perception of the limits of power, accountability, and what political ethics actually mean in a modern democracy.
It is only fair to acknowledge one thing. Talent should be recognized when it exists. And Nikos Anastasiades' ability to distance himself from responsibility whenever criticism was directed at him was, in its own way, a talent—a performance so polished it could have been taught in drama schools.
He did it with remarkable skill, often convincingly. Drawing on his familiar fiery temperament—"Let me be clear..."—raising an eyebrow and appearing deeply offended—"I will not tolerate..."—or portraying himself as deceived—"My government was the victim..."—uninformed—"At the time, I didn't know..."—or repentant—"I do not hesitate to admit..."
All the while, through political maneuvering, backroom tactics, calculations and influence, he achieved whatever objectives he had set for himself.
After all, if one accepts the claims made by former Central Bank governor Panicos Demetriades, Anastasiades once boasted that he was not only the biggest "political prostitute" but also the biggest "madam."
If anyone were to summarize that decade in just a few phrases, three statements repeatedly emerge from Anastasiades' own public comments:
"I didn't know."
"Where is the unethical part?"
"Full stop."
Perhaps more than any official report, those three phrases define an entire political era.
The perpetual "I didn't know"
There was always a familiar defense mechanism in Anastasiades' public narrative: ignorance.
We saw it during the financial crisis.
We saw it during the bank deposit haircut.
We saw it during the citizenship-by-investment scandal.
We saw it in matters involving members of his family and professional circle.
On the deposit haircut, the man who, before the election, assured voters that such a scenario was not even being discussed later claimed that his biggest political mistake had been making that assurance in the first place. At the time, he said, he did not know the true state of the economy.
Yet that claim directly contradicted the Anastasiades of the election campaign.
The politician who, as early as 2011, was warning of looming disaster.
Who spoke of bankruptcy?
Who compared the state of the economy to the swelling container at Mari before the deadly explosion.
"The explosion in the economy will be worse than the explosion at Mari," he told Phileleftheros in 2011.
"We are slightly beyond the swelling-container stage."
Later, in November 2012, he publicly urged then-President Demetris Christofias to take responsibility because, as he said, at least one state-owned banking institution was facing immediate collapse, with a strong possibility of contagion throughout the banking system and the wider economy.
The contradiction was obvious.
How can someone know enough to predict catastrophe but not enough to know that a deposit haircut was already being discussed internationally as a possible solution?
"Victims of clever developers, accountants and lawyers"
The same pattern reappeared with the citizenship-by-investment program.
The government portrayed itself as the victim of opportunistic developers, accountants, and lawyers.
The true scale of the problem, it was said, was not known at the time.
The abuses only became apparent later.
But the more often that explanation was repeated, the more another question emerged.
Not whether he knew.
But whether he believed ignorance alone was enough to absolve a president of political responsibility is another question.
Political responsibility is not a criminal offense.
It does not require personal involvement.
It does not require personal gain.
It is the obligation of a leader to answer for what happens under his administration.
Yet the response remained the same.
"I didn't know then."
Anastasiades argued that Cyprus had issued only a tiny fraction of the world's annual citizenship grants and suggested the country had been unfairly targeted for competitive reasons.
Before the inquiry committee investigating the citizenship program, he famously remarked:
"After I was elected, I must have been the most popular person in China. Every time someone wanted to invest, somebody would call and say, 'Mr. President, please meet him for just a minute so he can take a photograph with you.'"
The most popular person in China.
Yet somehow, he did not know.
Even as a relative seconded to the Interior Ministry oversaw applications that were later approved by his Cabinet—applications that, as Hasikos once famously described, were passing through with a simple "tick, tick, approved."
"If the government wanted to..."
One of the clearest examples of how executive power viewed independent institutions came during an interview with Politis in 2021.
"If the government wanted to intervene," Anastasiades said, "it could have influenced investigators to submit a file that would not justify prosecution by the attorney general."
He made the comment while attempting to reject allegations of cover-ups or interference in scandals and to emphasize that several officials had faced prosecution during his presidency.
Journalists pointed out the obvious: investigating crimes is the job of the police and prosecutors. Governments do not prosecute or convict.
The response caused immediate controversy.
Officials rushed to assure the public that no such interference had ever occurred.
But the damage was done.
Because many people heard something deeper than a simple misstatement.
They held a particular understanding of power.
And that perception resurfaced repeatedly in the years that followed.
"Where is the unethical part?"
Of all Anastasiades' public remarks, none may better capture his decade in power than this one.
"Where is the unethical part?"
The question was not about criminal conduct.
It was about conflicts of interest.
It concerned the fact that his former law firm, where his daughters were partners, was active in the citizenship program.
It concerned repeated appearances of family members in stories that found their way into public debate.
It concerned the secondment of a relative of the First Lady to the Interior Ministry, where she worked on citizenship applications.
Applications submitted by the former president's law firm ended up before the Cabinet, which made the final decisions.
Among those Cabinet members were individuals who would later occupy some of the state's most senior institutional positions, including positions responsible for interpreting or defending the legality of decisions they had previously approved.
Yet despite these overlapping roles, responsibilities and family connections, the central argument remained unchanged.
There was no issue.
Relatives of a president, it was argued, cannot be denied the right to work.
His daughters could not be expected to abandon their profession.
Family members could not be excluded from economic activity simply because a relative held public office.
His critics spoke about ethics.
He responded with economic figures.
The passports, he argued, brought billions into the economy.
Jobs were created.
Construction was revived.
Banks gained liquidity.
All of that may be true.
But it does not answer the question.
Political ethics cannot be balanced against GDP.
Seychelles and the central contradiction
No episode highlighted that contradiction more clearly than the Seychelles affair.
The issue was never the tropical island itself.
Nor family holidays.
Nor even the private jet.
It was the sequence of events.
A businessman obtains dozens of citizenships for family members.
A close personal relationship develops with the president.
Trips follow.
Questions follow.
Contradictions emerge over when they met, who paid for what, and the true nature of the relationship.
When the questions were raised, the answer was not exhaustive public accountability.
The answer was that the businessman was a friend.
That there had been no exchange of favors.
That the state had benefited.
But that was precisely the problem.
The same president who required his ministers to sign a strict code of ethics governing gifts, hospitality and favors appeared unable to understand why many citizens considered his own case problematic.
The contradiction was impossible to ignore.
The bar he set for others did not seem to apply equally to himself.
"Full stop"
There was one more recurring feature in nearly every major controversy of the period.
The belief that at some point the discussion simply had to end.
"Full stop."
"I will not reopen the issue."
"The matter is closed."
The logic was simple.
Explanations had been given.
Except controversies do not end when the politician at their center decides they are over.
They end when the explanations convince people.
And when they do not, the questions return.
Not because the opposition wants them to.
But because accountability demands it.
The normalization
Perhaps this is ultimately the most significant political legacy of the Anastasiades decade.
Not any single scandal.
But their accumulation.
Democracies are rarely eroded by one event.
They are eroded when the extraordinary becomes ordinary.
When each new revelation generates less surprise than the last.
When citizens stop asking whether something is right and begin asking only whether it is illegal.
The First Lady's property dealings.
The citizenship program.
The Seychelles.
Private jets.
Allegations of interference.
Endless debates over conflicts of interest.
Each case can be examined separately.
Together, however, they created something larger.
A sense that the boundaries were constantly shifting.
And those actions, which might once have triggered a political earthquake, eventually came to be treated as part of everyday political life.
The bar he set himself
This is why Nikos Anastasiades' political legacy will ultimately be measured not against his opponents, but against himself.
Against the standards he proclaimed.
Against the code of ethics he introduced.
Against the promises he made.
Against the ethical bar he himself raised while seeking power.
Which is why Hasikos' remark still resonates today.
Not because it predicted a specific scandal.
But because it identified, early on, the defining contradiction of an entire era:
The gap between the standards that were proclaimed and the standards that were ultimately applied.
And that gap, more than any inquiry report or court ruling, is likely to remain a lasting part of Nikos Anastasiades' political legacy for years to come.
