By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
The quality of a person, said the late Zahos Hadjifotiou, is judged by the way he treats waiters and not by his public relations image.
Which is to say: it may well be that, in this once golden-green leaf [Editor’s note: reference to Cyprus]– which we received in its entirety but in the hands of mediocrities we managed to leave it in half, putting millennia-old non-negotiables, under status of extinction – we have been “trained” to count success stories, “hubs”, “centres” and “bridges” that ostensibly demonstrate our great achievements, but the real image of a country – and a European one at that (!) – you will experience it at three in the morning, when you arrive at its International Airport and getting to your destination depends on the mood of a handful of taxi drivers who judge that the charges provided by law, 70 euros for Nicosia and 140 for Paphos, are not enough for them to sit their asses in front of the steering wheel and take you there.
Either they’ll ask you for much more, or they’ll try to bundle customers together, or you’ll be left gaping and wondering – not ourselves, we know, I am referring to foreign visitors – what underdeveloped country you’ve landed in. From these, the “small” but very important things, you judge any success story of a country. By the ones you won’t see in any commercial of the spectacular growth the country is experiencing.
You don’t attract tourists, nor do you sell an apartment for three million in a ghost tower, advertising the non-existent bus stops – in a place of 9,000 square kilometres all in all, which if you take away the 3,500 held by the Turks and the 250 of the British bases and the 240 of the buffer zone, what are you left with to manage? A little less than 5,500 square kilometres! To the former you show the sunset and Kourion and to the latter you show the European passport.
You don’t tell them that a 79-year-old woman was found dead in a ditch in the city that is “booming”, 500 metres from the hospital which she had visited in the morning and despite having many health problems, dementia and other mental issues, she was released and sent – alone – to go home. It is from the “little things” of everyday life, then, that you judge any progress, any development of a country. The “little things” that, no matter how much your geostrategic and geopolitical role is enhanced, these (not all, fortunately) remain unchanged for decades.
Recently, of course, and from major issues! Like major development projects! Now they are also moving in the framework of a… “long-term” and ineffective course, influenced by the Cyprus problem. One could say that we are living in the land of the non-rising sun. The Terminal at Vasiliko, Larnaca Port and Marina, Paphos – Polis Chrysochous road, landscaping of the Liopetri River…
Projects that have become symbols of irregularities, corruption, inadequacy, mismanagement… They are sinking, one after the other! Some collapse before they have even started or before they reach the halfway point, and after the planned implementation time has evaporated along with a few tens of millions… What is wrong with this country whose presidents cut inauguration ribbons day and night, which in recent years has had constant successes and achievements and conquests, which has become a “hub”, a “centre” and a “bridge” and, although wounded, is never defeated?
I make no secret of the fact that I often wonder what would have happened to us had we not had the European Union as our framework, had our accession not obliged us to take – reluctantly and unwillingly at times – two steps forward, and had our position in the Mediterranean not been what it is, to be “saved” many times by the interests involved and the great powers for their own self-interest? What would have happened to us – God forbid – had it not been for this relief of sorts, if we had been at the mercy of these mediocre, fortune-seeking and corrupt people?
Source: OUR ENTIRE LIFE, A LONG-TERM STRUGGLE (NOW INCLUDING THE MAJOR WORKS)
