I can recall the phrase from school. It was the title of a book we had to read by one Thomas Hardy.’Far From The Madding Crowd’ . Its been my philosophy for a while to many things. And with a bit of poetic license I’d adapt the phrase to “Maddening” because the polarisation, lies, and distortions we are living under in Cyprus right now are precisely that….

When I see some people baying for some one’s blood, unless of course its a mass murderer and the evidence is clear, I tend to go in the opposite direction. Its easy enough for many people to be swept up by the current wave of anti-Presidential euphoria. ‘The Dissatisfied’ who gather most nights (APOEL football games usually being the exception) outside the presidential palace may be demanding Christofias head on a plate, but then many of these people, at least the most hard nosed ones, the most dissatisfied ones, have been doing the same ever since he got elected, and they strike me as mad as a box of frogs on acid pills!

I also heard from an ordinary citizen today, whatever that means, that Christofias advizer gets paid 200,000 Euros a month. The woman who said this also told me she heard it on the radio, so it must be true. Perhaps some one got a couple of digits wrong, but then again we are talking about a mass media who are often guilty of exaggeration for the sake of stirring up trouble. What did they say last autumn, a muslim man ‘allgedly’ – we never heard or saw him say it – but he ‘allegedly said ‘ The bells should be banned from ringing in St Lazarus Church’ in Larnaca. This statement was tauntamount to Orthodox Christians of the utmost blasphemy. No one knew who this person was but the fact the media said it, made it into what we academics call a ‘factoid’ an unwanted myth, or in every day terms, an out and out lie.

So when I heard the maddening crowd chanting ‘Christofias, Murderer, Resign’ and ‘We Will Hang You’ it made my blood run cold because 1. We are not living in the ‘wild wild west’ where the possees implemented their own justice by hanging people on trees and 2. Every one is innocent until they have been proven guilty with substantiated evidence.

Of course what I have just said may make many people’s blood curl, but you tell me why should we be so vindictive, testosteronified like a bunch of football hooligans out to mash up the ‘opposing tribe’ when the facts have not been found as yet as to why the explosion happened on 11/7/11? Its easy enough to point the fingers at the executive power in this society and demand his head on a plate, but what about all the people involved in the chain of command?The explosion could have happened deliberately, by accident or it could also be that all the things that coul go wrong went wrong. I do however find it hard to believe, despite what the media are telling me to think, and what various haters are saying, that Dimtris Christofias, of Dikomo, the President of Cyprus knew this was going to happen, and did nothing to stop it from happening.

And last but by no means least. Since when did an investigation about a tragedy such as this start so immediately? You remember the S300 missiles that never came – was there ever an investigation – NOPE! Remember the Head of the National Guard, the late Evangelos Florakis and the tragic way he died – no investigation!! How about the pilot who went joy riding in the skies over a built up area in Kolossi and met a sad death when his plane crashed into two citizens houses – no investigation!!! And the 8 people who killed themselves when the stock market bubble burst, and all the thousands who lost huge amounts of money – no investigation. And the Helios Flight 522, and the 121 souls who died so tragically – No Prosecution – and still 6 painful years on No Justice!!! And no one was on the streets in any of these cases demanding the head of the president on a plate!

No one is guilty until they have been found guilty, with substantiated evidence and as far as I am concerned every politician in parliament who sat back when all the aforementioned tragedies happened should check their conscience and be honest enough to admit and do something about all the truths that have been hidden amongst all the bitterest lies we have been spoonfed for so long. May be I am askiing for too much, after all we are talking about the place where a crazy minority of 3 percenters organized a coup which led to an invasion by Turkey in 1974, and all the catastrophic consequences that followed, and nobody, to this very day has ever said sorry, not 1 single apology! And nobody to this day, has ever been tried or put on trial. It took governments 37 whole years to conduct an investigation on the ‘Cyprus File’ – ‘O Fakelos Ths Kybrou’, oh and that happened under the Presidency of Dimitris Christofias!!!

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