Do you have any questions for the future President?

Much has happened in the political scene in Cyprus since the last posting on the 21st of August. Campaigns were finally launched, candidate websites and blogs were created, statements are constantly made and issues have surfaced. Even one particular call for hara-kiri was debated! Harry Potter was mentioned and the relationship of King Arthur with Lancelot was brought up, albeit failing to call Merlin in the talks, the other perennial wizard of popular culture, aside from newcomer Harry Potter, who could have had a role on this election. Because, this is precisely what we all need right now. A magician well trained in the arts of fortunetelling in order to tell us who is going to be our next president, considering the fact that all three contenders get, more or less, the same percentage points in the various polls conducted and published. The incumbent president leads the polls, but the two other challengers are following right behind, and the difference between the three is diminishing at a constant rate. Therefore, the question for the statisticians is to determine the duration of the exposure to risk, which in this case is called time and has a deadline; the election date.

But leaving math aside, what about the public debate? What about the political discussion that is taking place? So far, is miserable. It all looks to me like a provincial competition for the mayor-ship of some third rated city of an obscure country still striving to discover its identity and place in the world. Do you agree? If you do, what do you do to change all that? Instead of complaining and saying nothing why don't we all request from the candidates to raise the bar on subjects dominating the public debate?

It is understood by communication and campaign experts that the simpler the message is the better for the receiver (i.e. the less processing it requires, thus the less objections will come up) but critical inquiry should be the foundation of the decision making mechanism of any mature person. Why then don't we ask the candidates in their well advertised websites and blogs or through the press to actually offer us well thought out positions and plans of action for the future? Why don't we ask them to tell us their vision for Cyprus and how they will go about and do it? Why, for example, don't we ask them to tell us where we will be in terms of our role inside the European Union, the common foreign and security policies and our participation in the Union international efforts, but we are only focusing our concern on whether the military service for conscripts will last for 18, 14 or 24 months? Why we talk about social policies and we are declaring hand outs for this or the other social group, but we say nothing about personal responsibility? Why we allow each candidate to issue statements comprising of lists of so called intellectuals or professors of one or the other topic that support them, but we fail to ask those "wise men" to actually tell us why they support one or the other? Why don't we ask the candidates to tell us how they will get Mr. Talat to abandon Ankara and the "establishment" in the occupied areas in order to join us in our motherland, but we are satisfied when they debate whether he can do it or not? The question should not be about the "why not" aspect of any issue, but about the "how to" approach.

The reason we are not asking those questions and many more of similar nature, it is because we think that it is not our job to do so. The other reason is, perhaps, our innate or intuitive ability to protect our selves from disappointment. Because we will be sadly surprised and feel empty if we discover that our chosen one, no matter who he or she is, is not who we thought and wanted him to be. It is like acknowledging a mistake we have been doing for many years. And that is a failure we can't accept, because by doing so we run the risk of challenging the entire system of beliefs we have been espousing for all those years we were imbedded into a certain set of ideological parameters. Therefore, we turn away and we see what we want to see.

Or maybe is something much simpler. In the case of us, Cypriots, I think it is. The reason that we will vote the way we have always voted rests primarily on one very simple criterion. We vote who we know better and who can get our job done in time of need. We vote the person we have access to in order to secure our direct personal interests better. This is the reason why we are divided in almost three equal segments of 33 percent of the vote. If we add the votes we get those percentages we see in the polls, give or take a couple of points. Some people call it party loyalty. I call it opportunism and corporatism. I also call it rational choice for any rent seeking person. Whether, at the end, we will get the rent or not is another matter…