The expressions heard from those who disagree with the government’s bills on violence in stadiums were as if Christodoulides imposed a military regime and the resistance was rushing to overthrow it.
The reactions mainly came from DISY and AKEL.
They cannot, they said, approve such overreach in the Ministry to decide when a football match will be played behind closed doors.
Such actions, they say, remind us of past historical periods. It’s a dictatorship imposed on sports.
And this dictatorship cannot be imposed by the government. The referee is the one who should be deciding, they state.
We had no doubt that nothing would change, we said it last week, but we did not expect to see so much hypocrisy emerging. What the government proposes is not the solution to the problem because it concerns the distant future, while the problem is evolving today.
But, let’s say it’s worth discussing. That is, by legislative regulation, the government will be given the power to decide “for reasons of public order and safety the conduct of matches without the presence of fans.”
The recent example is the most glaring: In the match AEL – Apollonas, which triggered the discussions, the government knew ten days beforehand that what occurred would happen.
If it judged there was a risk, why not ban fans? The referee, whom everyone invokes, cannot decide in advance. He can only decide within the stadium whether to cancel the match or not.
But only within the stadium and after the incidents. No one decides beforehand.
If the government cannot decide in such extreme cases, then who is responsible for public safety? The CFA? The referee? The club presidents? Only the hooligans can decide that, no one else.
I heard on Saturday the DISY spokesperson, Onoufrios Koullas, saying on RIK that he does not consider that we have such a big hooliganism problem as they had in Britain, that “they are very few” and we should not punish them all by closing the stadiums.
But, if we don’t have such a big problem, why have they been discussing this issue for the past week, as well as several other times since the beginning of the championship?
And when will they consider the problem as significant? When we have fatalities? Aren’t the injured enough?
It is known that “they are very few”, but we don’t want our politicians to be telling us this with a reassuring mood, as if they were laying down the carpet for them to continue their actions.
What we want is for them to explain to us why these few control public safety inside and outside the stadiums and decide whether the many will end up watching football or war.
The problem of hooliganism will certainly not be solved by two bills that will give powers to the government. But the absolute reactions of the two major parties certainly do not even allow the attempt.
They could discuss it thoroughly, and they could decide that a committee appointed via legal processes will make these decisions and not the Ministry, but if they decide without second thought that the current situation should continue, I can only describe them as irresponsible.
P.S. They want, they say, an amendment to the Constitution to regulate the uncontrolled behavior of the Attorney General. They have a problem with the Cyprus Medical Association (CMA) because it does not revoke professional licenses from doctors.
One was convicted twice for indecent assault against his patients but never had his professional license revoked by the CMA.
And the House Human Rights Committee requested state intervention to change the way the CMA operates.
But, in the way the football associations operate, the state should not intervene, it is viewed as an overreach and a dictatorship.
