It was with horror and disgust that I read the content of the article Cyprus: A Lesson For Life by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna (March 19), which was translated in Greek and posted on websites in Greece and Cyprus.
Horror because his attitude, as narrated by himself, is indicative of the subservient attitude of all those present in that room in Brussels and disgust because none of them had the courage, obligation and decency to raise their voice and express solidarity with that man sitting opposite, the Cypriot minister, who represented my little country Cyprus.
Neither my country nor its minister, sitting there with a pistol to his head, as Scicluna himself admits, expected their pity. What they did expect was their practical support and solidarity.
Unfortunately, Scicluna, by his own unashamed admission (like the rest of his eurozone counterparts), sat near his German counterpart obediently, with his seatbelt fastened during his ‘unavoidable cross-Atlantic flight’ and maintained his silence – just like a modern-day Pontius Pilates – as Cyprus and its representative were subjected to a grilling.
Their collective attitude towards a fellow member of the European Union could not have been better condemned as it has by Peter Drousiotis, the president of the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK in a letter titled Cyprus Suffers For Other’s Failing, published in The Guardian (March 18).
Drousiotis wrote thus:
“Cyprus’s eurozone ‘bailout’ should more properly be called blackmail. Half-baked, inequitable, flawed, selectively vindictive, counter-productive, downright hostile to a small island whose main fault was its overexposure to Greece, which became the cause of its troubles following the Greek bailout haircut imposed by eurozone financial authorities last year. This is double punishment by the same people.”
EU solidarity should have been in greater evidence than it was in Brussels last Saturday.