Our View: Christodoulides should shutter support agency, it has no value
Director of the president’s office Charalambous Charalambous announced his resignation on Monday, bowing to calls to step down by almost all the political parties including those participating in government. It was a decision aimed at easing the political criticism of the government and quelling the social media anger sparked by the video released last week exposing the dubious fund-raising methods used by the Christodoulides government.
A day earlier, as part of this damage limitation effort by the government, the wife of the president Philippa Christodoulides Karsera stepped down as chairperson of the Independent Social Support Agency after the “merciless attack” she was subjected to on social media, featuring the “dissemination of fake news and defamatory claims.” And on Monday morning in Limassol, President Nikos Christodoulides said he was considering the abolition of the Social Support Agency.
Was he pandering to Diko, which had demanded the abolition of the Agency together with the sacking of Charalambous, or was he admitting that it served no purpose other than to enable the first lady to be charitable with the money donated by people and companies that wanted to have good relations with the government? In fact, despite what Karsera said in her resignation post, the reality is that the Agency evolved into a vanity project for the first lady.
It was set up in 2015, when the economy was in recession and many families were still suffering the consequences of the haircut and needed additional financial assistance. The Agency’s sole purpose was to offer financial assistance to university students whose families could not support them because they had fallen on hard times. But is there a need today, when the economy is thriving, for the Agency? There is already a state scholarship foundation and a student welfare department at the education ministry, which offers support to needy students. How much financial support are so-called ‘needy’ students entitled to?
The reality is that the Agency has outlived its use, but it has been used by the President and his wife as an instrument for their political benefit. Since Christodoulides’ election, the Agency has doubled its annual revenue and has money sitting in the bank, as it raised more than was needed. The donors were a carefully-guarded secret, the president and his wife successfully resisting attempts of the legislature to secure disclosure.
The way secrecy was protected gave rise to suspicions that companies which donated to this fund secured favours from or access to the government, which was a form of corruption. The content of the controversial video indicated that these suspicions were not unjustified. The president’s former chief of staff clearly said on camera that a donation to the Social Support Agency secured access to the president. Are we to conclude that the bigger the donation the greater the presidential desire to help the donor?
Christodoulides should go ahead with the plan to abolish this agency as it has been exposed for what it really was by the video, and the state already has methods of supporting needy students.