Anxiety At Asgata Reflects Wider Loss of Trust in Government

The army caused panic yesterday when it moved munitions to Asgata village from Palodia, resulting in village residents demonstrating outside a national guard camp and forcing the army to change its plans.

Since the deadly explosion on July 11th, their panic is a small microcosm of the wider anxiety and loss of trust felt by Cypriots towards the government these days. Truth is, we don't know whether we'll wake up to another disaster tomorrow morning, more dead, more wounded - more accidents caused by indifference, stonewalling and neglect towards public safety.

The government and president are not behaving in a way that would restore trust, either. From the president down to his subordinate ministers and staff, every single soul has rejected responsibility and blamed other parties. Blowing smokescreens, stonewalling, evading full disclosure and full transparency, a parade of unconvincing characters appears daily to offer us half truths and weak excuses.

This is the root of the problem. It's the kind of behaviour one expects from a spoiled child who broke his toy and blames the other kid. Not the kind of behaviour one expects from grown men with the heavy responsibility of running an entire country.

What has happened to us? Why do these people believe we will buy these transparently pathetic excuses and pleas of ignorance? The villages around Mari's naval base were living in a constant state of fear knowing those containers were a death trap, so how did the president and his cabinet sleep easy at night in the full knowledge they had a huge amount of dangerous explosives sitting in the sun for over two years? How and why were the navy commander's repeated requests to remove the containers ignored for so long?

We choose our destiny - our fate chooses us. Is this government and its negligent attitude our fate? If we allow this behaviour to be acceptable, then it will become our fate to live in the same constant fear those villagers did, culminating in a terrible explosion.

The far better choice is to choose our destiny, and firmly show them the door through early presidential elections. Any opposition worth its salt would move towards this goal immediately - before more public anxiety is created and more prevarication leads to worse consequences than the ones we are currently suffering.