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“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?” – Saint Augustine
Yet another case. Yet another scandal. Yet another acquittal — one of the few that ever made it to court in the first place. Five years after the Al Jazeera trial began, the two central figures in the video have been cleared of all charges. This was the third case to reach the courts over the golden passports scandal, despite the Nicolatos report having concluded that the scheme involved arbitrariness, conflicts of interest, irregularities, mass illegality and brazen violations of the law. According to the court’s ruling, the prosecution failed to call key witnesses directly involved in the final verification of whether financial criteria had been met. No bank accounts were ever opened for examination.
This verdict is the latest in a series of rulings that confirm the inability of our institutions to deliver justice. There have been no convictions for the economic collapse that brought this country to its knees. None for the bankruptcy of the Co-Operative Bank. And the golden passports scandal appears headed for the same fate. It is as though the entire system has entered into a silent, tacit agreement of mutual cover-up. The extraordinary revelations that emerge daily rarely lead to punishment or trouble the system in any meaningful way. Impunity and unaccountability appear to be thoroughly entrenched. On the rare occasions cases do reach court, the accused are acquitted. It is fast becoming the norm: illegality gets documented, but never punished.
The prevailing view in society today is that the institutions are not functioning and justice is not being served. What is worse, however, is that a deeper conviction is taking hold — that this failure of the Attorney General’s office and the courts to deliver justice is not merely a matter of incompetence, but the result of a wholly deliberate choice by the state and the judiciary to place the powerful and the well-connected beyond accountability. An “undeniable” entanglement that has extended its tentacles into the justice system itself. This is not an arbitrary conclusion. It is one built on dozens of cases — cases either never brought before the courts, or brought before them and handled in ways that were frankly indefensible. It was compounded by Anastasiades — already discredited in the eyes of the public — choosing to appoint close associates to the two senior positions at the Attorney General’s office, deepening suspicion still further. And above all, it has been fed by the conduct of those appointees themselves. Today, politicians documented as having abused their positions and embarrassed this country continue to be rewarded with severance packages, official cars and personal secretaries. And they are preparing to go on the offensive — reinforcing the public impression that justice neither works nor concerns the system.
Embedding the rule of law and genuine equality before it is not a matter of choice. It is the only path available to us in a society that has come to despise its politicians and no longer trusts its institutions — a society with not a drop of patience left. Nothing is more dangerous for a democracy, particularly in the fragile and volatile moment we are living through, than a citizenry that believes there are no rules — or that the rules apply only to certain people, while those who have plundered public wealth continue to do so, undisturbed. Because in an environment where lawlessness prevails, democracy is extinguished.
At a time when disillusionment with the system is almost universal, justice is not only failing to shoulder its responsibilities — it appears to be actively complicit in a situation that is driving the complete collapse of whatever institutional credibility remains. Every ruling confirms that it is part of a cycle that refuses to be broken. And the question now being asked is as clear as it is uncomfortable:
What becomes of us without justice?
This article was first published on 22.02.2026
