Member of Parliament Andreas Themistocleous (DISY) faces seven charges involving reckless driving, mostly speeding, after the Supreme Court lifted his parliamentary immunity.

In one charge, he is accused of going over the speed limit by 90 km.

The MP hasn’t raised any objections to the charges, and the next court date is on the 18th of March.

End of an era?

A new bill to restrict parliamentary immunity to issues of political exposure has been drafted by the government.

The privilege was never meant to be a blanket protection and encourage irresponsible or illegal behaviour, but to protect lawmakers from undue persecution when they make difficult political decisions.

Unfortunately, the privilege has been publicly abused for decades, with MPs and even presidents getting away with behaviour that would have been sanctioned if it came from the ordinary citizen.

This arrogance has been documented countless times including;

• Outright business conflicts that have a serious impact on the public interest.
• Misuse of public funds, for example, Cyprus Airways. Public funds are to be spent on the public interest and not wasted on loss-making businesses.
• Senseless laws that have never benefited the public or are rooted in what’s best for society but serve a narrow parochial interest.
• Denial of responsibility, even though it was perfectly obvious they were responsible, as in the case of ex-president Christofias refusing to acknowledge he was responsible for his own decisions in the aftermath of the explosion at Evangelos Florakis naval base in 2011.
• Breaches of road safety laws, which actually brought the whole issue to a head when MP Andreas Themistocleous refused to pay his speeding tickets and rubbed his immunity in the police’s face each time he got caught.
• Breaches of environmental laws, as in the case of MP Evgenios Hamboulas posting his meal of illegally trapped ambeloupoulia (wild, migrating birds).
• Delays in implementing EU laws because they don’t serve a local interest, even though they are for the bigger good.
• Outright corruption, as in the case of former Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides, now serving jail time for money laundering in an arms purchase case.

Obviously, it’s time to make the House of Representatives truly accountable to the laws everyone else has to follow. Abuses of power come from all political parties, not one of them has been able to prove it is better than the other on this count, although credit should go to the current Cabinet of Ministers for proposing the bill.

A balance needs to be preserved, by no means must this new law expose MPs to undeserved or wrongful persecution through the law, but the days of flouting their own laws must end.