From Fidias to Makarios and political decay

Politics corruptionelectionsfidias panayiotoupress freedom From Fidias to Makarios and political decay Feidias Relevant News From Fidias to Makarios and political decay 13 August 2026 Hard to detect, easy to conceal 13 August 2026 Remedica widens Clonotril recall: check your batch number 13 August 2026 newsroom 13 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Makarios Drousiotis’s fundraiser on the one hand, Fidias Panayiotou’s shorts on the other, and in the middle, the mob rule of social media. The ingredients of an equation of political and social confusion, at a time when substance is being lost amid the power of image and the intensity of reaction. The public agenda is increasingly being shaped by the noise generated by the swarm of online reactions and the force of self-important monologues across the various social media platforms. A society trying to show reflexes in response to an event or phenomenon is healthy and necessary. But when reaction is reduced to outrage, impulse and the imposition of the crowd’s view, it ceases to be a social reflex and becomes a pathology. We raise all this because of two issues that, in the middle of the summer lull, have come to dominate the public sphere. The first concerns the uproar over the choice of attire by Fidias Panayiotou who, incidentally, happens to be both an MEP and the leader of a political party, when he sat in the front row at the memorial event honouring Tassos Isaac and Solomos Solomou wearing shorts. We cannot know whether this was a deliberate choice intended to provoke reactions and draw the spotlight onto himself, or simply another blunder born of indifference and a culture summed up by the attitude: “I couldn’t care less about any of you or any of this.” What is clear, however, is that one way or another, Fidias has become a mirror of one side of Cypriot society. A side that at some point decided that a man who appeared out of nowhere, whose central political message was that he knew nothing, deserved more trust than anyone else. Perhaps because, in doing so, it believed it was rebelling. Shaking up the establishment. Sending a political message. But politics is not a popularity contest, nor is it a game of impressions. And challenging the establishment is not, in itself, a political proposal. Rejection, provocation and difference can have value when they are backed by thought, knowledge, responsibility and a clear political position. Otherwise, they remain nothing more than communication tools. On the other hand, in recent days we have turned the question of whether fundraising for Makarios Drousiotis falls under the law governing public collections into a public tug of war. Well, this is not merely a matter of terminology. It is much more than that. Whether it is lawful or unlawful for someone to ask the public for money is not a trivial issue. Heaven help us if anyone, for any reason, could simply ask for financial support without any framework, any oversight or any accountability. And this is not only about Makarios Drousiotis. It concerns much more broadly the fundraising initiatives organised and circulated through social media. In Makarios Drousiotis’s case, however, there are other questions that should also be discussed and taken seriously. Because the “Santi” affair and the claims made by Makarios Drousiotis are far too serious to be reduced simply to an appeal to press freedom or freedom of expression. These are not mere opinions. They are claims concerning events and individuals and, precisely because they are serious, they require evidence, answers and scrutiny. And in this particular case, this was not a piece of journalism governed by the rules and procedures of a journalistic investigation, but a public post containing specific claims and references to named individuals. The burden of substantiating those claims — or at the very least showing that there is a reasonable basis for them — lies with the person making them. We live in an age in which information no longer needs to be true in order to have an impact. It only needs to be intense enough, provocative enough or emotionally charged enough. Speed replaces verification, impression replaces evidence, and mass reaction replaces judgement. And that may be far more dangerous than the substance of either of these two cases. Because the problem is neither the shorts nor the fundraiser. The deeper problem is that we are beginning to lose the ability to distinguish the important from the trivial, fact from allegation, criticism from public shaming, and politics from spectacle. 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