WHILE OUR HOMES ARE BURNING…

The Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision to remove the then Auditor General of the Republic was a turning point for Cyprus in far more ways than we might have imagined. For democracy as well.

Not for the decision itself, which was both praised and criticised by respected legal experts, as it should be. My opinion lacks any relevant background and consequently any significance. What was crucial was what followed. The way public figures and many journalists handled matters was irresponsible, even criminal.

It was the final blow after repeated strikes against Justice, one of the few things still functioning in this country. With problems, yes. Procedural and substantive. I would add that there are quite a few bad apples among the good ones when speaking of the quality and ethics of officials. We live in the same society. What we produce, by extension, cannot be immaculate and untainted.

This isn’t unique to us. It’s a human problem, however much one might manage to limit it.

However, Justice was and remains, in reality, what it should be for the vast majority: society’s safety valve, the sense that some things cannot be easily penetrated or conquered, unlike the political world, for instance, where the proportions of positive and negative elements are reversed.

This was damaged, damaged severely, and above all, allowed to be damaged in an atmosphere of silence that was interpreted, quite reasonably, as the awkwardness of the “corrupt” faced with society’s anger-anger that was once again inflamed by certain individuals who knew exactly what they were doing. The corrupt, the unscrupulous, the fraudsters, if distinguished by anything, it’s their shamelessness and complete indifference to what their victims think. This type usually “thrives” and enjoys, feels validation and satisfaction when they see they’ve outsmarted them; the few and the many.

What happened then with the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision was that those qualified to study it said it was perfectly sound as it was thoroughly substantiated, or that while substantiated, the judges’ treatment of the subsequent “Robin of the Crazy” [Editor’s note: Wordplay on ‘Robin Hood’] was excessive.

In a society where, in record time, anyone with a different view was and still is lined up against the wall as a sell-out, enemy of society, part of “the system”, an agent or whatever else, the silence of those who should have found – since results proved they hadn’t – the stature to stand as a bulwark against populism and ultimately the fascistisation of society and public discourse that is taking place, left Justice uncovered for some time, and it too fell.

When an oak falls, everyone gathers wood. Only here, the wood wasn’t harvested by everyone but by a few. Cheers to us all.

There is in every country a large segment of people who are not clever or, even worse, nowhere near as clever as they think. The latter are far more dangerous than the simply foolish. Together, they are the driving force of populism, along with levelling, stigmatisation, and character assassination for increasingly trivial reasons.

Nothing frightens those with any public presence more than this.

Because they know this mob will butcher them based not on truth but on the use of plausibility, which the truly corrupt who manipulate them will use to concoct entire narratives using twisted logic. Even a joke of the kind we all make – or used to make? – can be transformed into a “capital offence” and used for the summary cancellation of a person. Never a populist, because their victims, their growing audience, simply don’t listen.

And those who are cancelled aren’t those who play with populism, nor the corrupt. Those cancelled are everyone else. The more well-known they are, the easier their cancellation. In a society – and this is the essence of it all – which has come to believe that everyone is useless, everyone is entangled, everyone is what they shouldn’t be.

We’ve reached the tragic point where any view contrary to that cultivated by populists and demagogues is considered superfluous, ears and minds close, people enter the mindset of blind partisanship and follow any “messiah” who appears and manipulates them cleverly.

Justice, therefore, was one of the few institutions in which people placed some hope. That decision was subject to unprecedented exploitation and distortion by all those who, note, know and bank on the fact that people’s memory, especially in our era with its bombardment of information, is short-lived.

Court decisions that please them pass unnoticed by all these politicians and others and consequently their audience, while the displeasing ones, the uncomfortable ones, the unsatisfactory ones for the “popular sentiment” – itself largely shaped by the plausibilities of this current breed who use instincts rather than logic to “explain” problems and incite fanaticism – are transformed into “proof of corruption“.

People, or more accurately a large portion of them, have reached the point where they are never satisfied no matter what they’re given, always have only something negative to say, go and vote for populists (note: because anyone who soberly reads, for example, the decision regarding the former Auditor General and the data examined – not the judges’ opinions – is terrified), vote for fascists from both right and left, vote for any YouTube clown for entertainment.

Yet they don’t understand that what’s being demolished are the things we cannot afford to lose and which were our responsibility as citizens to consider how to repair.

Populism grows stronger day by day and carries with it the cunning, the fraudsters, the populists, the madmen, the informers, occasionally the unscrupulous without principles who can present themselves to this audience as distinguished figures, and all sorts of deficient individuals. Mentally and morally. Who, if anything remains half-burnt, will burn it completely.

What’s coming isn’t a new world; it will simply be scorched earth. Scorched freedoms, scorched rights, and above all, scorched logic.

As someone without children, I cannot hide my relief.

As well as my puzzlement: how can you bear to watch it?

This article was originally published on 04.04.2025

Source: WHILE OUR HOMES ARE BURNING…