There is no evidence of nepotism in North Cyprus

Nepotism is a system of exchanging favours within the government and between the government and favoured individuals. There is no evidence of nepotism in North Cyprus, that is not to say there is no nepotism in North Cyprus it’s just that none has been proven to exist in a court of law.

We all know how government and the law should operate at its most basic level, for example, a crime is committed, investigated and the evidence given to a judge to make a decision about prosecution. Transparency is where the investigation, collection of evidence and its referral to a judge can be clearly seen. In a government ruled by nepotism no such transparency exists. If a person asks a relevant official what is happening about a crime they have reported and nepotism is involved they will be told to go away and forget about it. Not in those exact words but using well practised formulae which mean the same, for example, “we’re looking into it.” This might be convincing at first but after a year or two, hearing the same explanation repeated, it becomes clear that you are being told to go away and forget about it.

Ex-pat do-gooders write a lot about such cases and expect their words to in some way change this system which works just nicely, thank you, for those who live and breathe its benefits daily. These officials expect to retire on its benefits and will defend their right to nepotism with every nepotic trick in the book. Will they suddenly wake up one day a say, “oh dear, that is very naughty of me” and suddenly change their ways? Even if they did, the system is far too entrenched to let them.

There are two ways to change this system, both of which rely on transparency. Nepotism only works on those involved being able to work in the dark. It thrives in an environment where no one is able to see the little favours they exchange. This does not stop them acting in front of other people, it means that these people must also accept the club called Nepotism and of course be rewarded with favours for doing so. “Nepotism is like a vampire,” writes Phedon Nicolaides, a Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

www.wikileaks.com is a website which has been set up to accept documents from international government whistle blowers, sent anonymously so that even if the website is asked to reveal their source they would not be able to do so. In a stroke of brilliance the operators of this website have encrypted a huge number of allegedly sensitive documents and have spread them throughout the internet without a password. Because the encryption used is apparently unbreakable, the government does not know if the contents are top secret or not and so cannot stop their spread. It could be seen as a form of blackmail to suggest that certain people and departments changed their nepotic ways at the risk of the passwords being released globally.

The second method of making nepotism less able to function is to involve outsiders in government institutions, people who are anti-nepotism, incorruptible and shall we say, moral. This involvement would be at the top and the investigator would be given a brief to write a report showing how the system functions. For example, say a crime has been reported to the police and nothing was done about it, they would follow up the paper trail it should have left. How could this work? Let’s say this official was an EU senior police officer. They would arrange for a website to be set up to collect complaints about crimes which had not been properly investigated. The official would chose a representative sample of complaints and investigate what happened to them. A bit like a police complaints website in the UK – http://complaintsboard.org.uk/tag/police-complaints.

OK, just a few ideas meant to show other ways to get things down aside from demonstrations and a shrug of the shoulders to indicate that we should just let things happen because there is no way to change it.

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