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Our View: Our president’s behaviour befits that of a coward and not a leader

Published on September 6, 2011

PRESIDENT Christofias cut a sad figure as he trudged into the Ministry of Finance yesterday to answer questions about events that led to the Mari explosion. He looked a broken man, but not so broken to deviate from the script we have been hearing from his spokesmen and AKEL deputies ever since July 11, when the Iranian containers exploded killing 13 people and destroying the Vassiliko power station.

The president knew nothing and heard nothing about the dangers posed by the munitions containers, as the matter was dealt with by the ministers of defence and foreign affairs. He did not know how close the Mari naval base was to the power station, he was not informed about the small explosions that had taken place a week before the big blast and he was not made aware of the concerns of National Guard officers expressed several months earlier, regarding the risk of exposing the containers to the elements.

All he knew, according to yesterday’s testimony, was that when the shipment arrived in Cyprus he had been given assurances by the defence minister that the containers posed no risk. He admitted that there was a general under-estimation of the risks posed by the containers – by everyone involved – implying that he had been lulled into a false of security by his advisors. Concluding, he declared he had no ‘direct personal responsibility’ for what had happened.

He may have stuck to the script, but when the complete abrogation of responsibility comes from the mouth of the president rather than from his spokesmen it sounds infinitely worse. We listened to our head of state, making cheap excuses, pleading ignorance and happily laying blame on his ministers and officials in order to save his own skin. This was the performance of a coward and not of country leader. A true leader would have had the courage to stand up and take full responsibility for the failings, mistakes and incompetence of his subordinates instead of crudely hanging them out to dry in order to save himself.

Only a coward would hide behind his subordinates in the way Christofias did yesterday. What would we think of a general who lost a battle and then blamed his officers for keeping him in the dark about their plans? Would he not ultimately be responsible for the defeat? This does not apply to President Christofias, who would have us believe that everyone else is to blame and has responsibility for the Mari blast except him. Nobody could have discredited Christofias, as a president and as a leader, more convincingly than he, himself, did yesterday.

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/mari-naval-b ... r/20110906