Our View: Government should not be spreading alarm amid Iran crisis
In times like these, the government of the country should have one objective, to make sure that there is calm and that citizens are made to feel safe. The president has an important role to play in this regard, his main job as head of state being to reassure citizens that the government is in control of the situation and prepared to deal with any eventuality. This is the way to create the conditions for people to carry on with their daily lives as normally as possible under these circumstances.
Sadly, the government has been very disappointing in this regard, conducting affairs of state in public and giving the impression that it is acting in fear. This was the overriding impression given by the way it has been dealing with the UK government after the missile attack on Akrotiri base on Sunday night. Since Monday morning, the government has been expressing its “displeasure” with the UK government for its failure to clearly state that the British bases would only be used for humanitarian reasons.
After Monday’s national council meeting, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis, speaking about the matter, said: “It is something that I am obliged to say we view with displeasure. The fact that while these assurances existed, during yesterday’s address by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there was no clear-cut clarification that the British bases in Cyprus, under no circumstances, would be used for reasons other than humanitarian.”
That the government made such a public fuss about this suggested that it feared the failure of Keir Starmer to make this clarification made the island at target. The government is being incredibly naïve if it seriously believed that such a statement would prevent an attack by Hezbollah drones or missiles? Iran would not believe any such statement, because Britain is a close ally of the United States and is unlikely to turn down any request for military assistance if it were made. The Cyprus Republic is also a strategic ally of the US, which was offered use of the Andreas Papandreou air base in the future, and makes no secret of its close ties with Israel.
In short, it could have been a target of Iran even if there were no base here and irrespective of how often Letymbiotis and President Nikos Christodoulides declare that “we are a humanitarian hub.” These declarations betray a government that has been seized by fear and is at a loss about what to do. The decision to evacuate three villages in the vicinity of Paphos airport, which was closed for a while on Monday, also seemed to have been a knee-jerk reaction by a government that is spreading alarm, rather than calming things down, both with its words and actions.
The government must act in a responsible, composed and rational way if it wants to minimise the adverse effects of this difficult period for the country.