Diko MP Zacharias Koulias did not cause a crisis when he announced he was going to appoint a new auditor-general himself, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Thursday.
“There was no institutional aberration or anything of the sort. I heard what Koulias said. I was in talks. I had not decided beforehand, before I knew whether I would have to appoint a new auditor-general or not. Would I have had thoughts or concerns without knowing? Of course not,” he said.
He said he had then decided who he would appoint and held discussions on the day that former Auditor-General Odysseas Michaelides was relieved of his duties by the Supreme Constitutional Court.
“So there was no institutional crisis. Let us not create ‘crises’ ourselves in quotation marks or without quotation marks, without there actually being any issue,” he said.
Five days after Michaelides was sacked, Koulias realised that he would temporarily undertake the role of acting president when both Christodoulides and House President Annita Demetriou were out of the country, owing to the fact that at 73 years old, he is the oldest member of Cyprus’ parliament.
Christodoulides was set to attend the United Nations Security Council in New York and Demetriou was due to travel to Malta for the conference of the presidents of parliament of small European states.
He said he would appoint a new auditor-general one minute after both were safely out of the country.
However, his plans were scuppered shortly after when Demetriou cancelled her trip to Malta, ensuring that he would never get the chance to be acting president.
To this end, Christodoulides was keen to stress that even if Demetriou had not cancelled her trip, Koulias would not have been able to unilaterally appoint an auditor-general and have his decision stand.
“Even when the President is absent, the person who is acting president is in consultation with the President as they take any action. So, let us not create by ourselves any institutional crises or issues which do not actually exist,” he said.
He then moved on to the matter of reforms to the legal service and audit office and said both matters were at an “advanced stage”, while also hinting at reforms to Cyprus’ central bank and “other institutions”.
“We started first of all with the executive. The creation of the advisory council disperses the power the president has, of course respecting the constitution. There are other things going on. More generally, this is an effort which does not concern individuals, it concerns institutions and how we modernise the state”.
The government put forward a set of bills regarding the planned changes to the legal service and the audit office a month ago, saying they constitute “modernising” reforms. Should the bills become law, they will decentralise power in both institutions, reining in the powers of both the attorney-general and the auditor-general.
The government said the legal service’s modernisation will entail a separation of the attorney-general and deputy attorney-general’s powers by establishing two new roles: those of a director of public prosecutions (DPP) and a deputy.
The government outlined that the attorney-general will remain as the state’s legal adviser and the head of the legal service, while the DPP and their deputy will undertake the attorney-general’s current responsibilities relating to public prosecutions.
On the matter of the audit office, the government said they will establish an “audit board”, which will be composed of the auditor-general, the deputy auditor-general, and three other people.
