Our View: Security, not status, should decide police protection

Justice and Public Order Minister Costas Fitiris should be congratulated for taking it upon himself to rationalise the issue of security details. The absurd practice of providing former presidents and former House speakers with a posse of policemen to drive them around and do their errands has been a subject of public debate for years, but nobody dared do anything about it, because the affected politicians would make a fuss behind the scenes. Nobody would dare do this publicly because they knew they would be mocked. The ‘no-nonsense’ Fitiris was not prepared to listen to anyone and introduced a rational system based on security criteria rather than dubious idea that former state officials and their widows were entitled to have policemen, mainly to act as their chauffeurs.

The widow of George Vassiliou, Androulla, said as much after being informed that that ‘her’ policeman would be withdrawn. She had the honesty to say that “in my case (having a policeman) was not a matter of security,” but of him “taking me to official events” because “I am not going to drive around the neighbourhood to find parking to be able to go to an embassy event. ” Vassiliou and Ersi Christofias will lose their police chauffeurs while former House speakers – who should never have been provided with a security detail once they stepped down – will have their police entourage reduced. It is unclear what will happen to the 12-man security detail of Nicos Anastasiades. As for House speaker Annita Demetriou, does she really need to have a 10-member security detail? So ludicrous was this practice, that that the number of policemen in a party leader’s security detail was determined by his party’s electoral strength, while the bigger the detail the more important a politician felt. Thankfully, Fitiris…