Our View: Expert help is welcome – now make the findings public
Many were surprised to hear that President Christodoulides had asked the United States government to send a team of experts to conduct investigations on how the recent fires started, evaluate the management of the firefighting efforts and make suggestions for more effective firefighting.
Some media commentators saw this as a delaying tactic, another way of avoiding “apportioning political responsibilities” for what happened two weeks ago. Some newspapers and political parties had been calling for ministers to take political responsibility and resign, but this has not happened.
The complaints are rather unfair because under the circumstances, a ministerial resignation – necessary given that two people were burned alive because of the poor management of the firefighting – might have silenced the government’s critics, but it would not have shed any more light on what had gone wrong and what needed to be done to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
Although the president was mocked when he asked the four government departments involved in the firefighting to submit reports about their action plans, possible weaknesses and how operation could be made more effective, it was the right thing to do. It made public employees, who rarely take responsibility for anything and never resign, understand that they are also accountable, when things in the department they head go wrong.
They cannot always hide behind the minister, even though it is impossible to sack a public employee for incompetence and bad decisions. The demand for reports by the forestry department, civil defence, the fire service and the police was a smart move, even though nobody would have expected any of these to take blame or accept responsibility for the weaknesses of the firefighting operations. Yet it was made clear that the president wanted accountability from public employees for whom it is unheard of.
That was only the first step. After receiving the reports and making them public, he announced that he had asked the US for experts to assist with the investigations of the recent fires. Quite rightly, he would not be relying on the reports of the self-interested departments for his conclusions. A ten-member US team arrived on Wednesday night and started work on Thursday. According to reports, the Americans would visit the area where the first fires appeared to try to establish how they started.
Whether it is possible for the American experts to arrive at safe conclusions about the cause of the fire, two weeks after it happened, we do not know, but we are sure they would be able to provide some insights into what had gone wrong. People are much more likely to accept the findings of the US experts as they are outsiders, neutral professionals, who have no interest in protecting anyone or carrying out a whitewash. They might also help us to be better prepared next time we have wildfires.
President Christodoulides has made the right calls, but he has not made it clear whether he would make the report of the US experts public. All he said was that they would “submit an appropriate report to me.” Surely the report, like those of the departments, must be made public.