President Nikos Christodoulides’ relentless efforts to present himself and his government as influential players in regional affairs and Gaza in particular lead to rather embarrassing situations. On Sunday, speaking about the following day’s trip to Egypt for the ceremony on the peace agreement between Hamas and Israel, he said he had a “specific plan” with “regard to the reconstruction of Gaza” and that he would elaborate on this during the ceremony.

In addition to this, he said: “We want Cypriot companies to have a role in the reconstruction of the country(sic), we want, as the Cyprus Republic, to have a role on security issues, on all these that fall within what has been agreed, especially in the first phase of the agreement.” He stressed that “we have specific planning from now on, both in relation to the reconstruction of Gaza with the participation of Cypriot companies and with the provision of more humanitarian help.”

This was another illustration of the superficiality with which the president approaches issues, reducing all of them to publicity gimmicks. For example, nobody knows whether the ceasefire will last longer than a few weeks, but Christodoulides is demanding a piece of the reconstruction pie for Cypriot companies! He never asked the Cypriot construction companies, which are having difficulty completing the projects they have undertaken in Cyprus because of staff shortages, without taking on additional work abroad. Press reports indicated that the president came up with this idea without consulting any of them.

On Tuesday, Phileleftheros reported that Christodoulides had gone to Sharm el-Sheikh “with a plan about the role Cyprus can play the day after in Gaza. The six points proposed by Cyprus correspond to and implement specific aspects of the 20 points included in the peace plan of US President Donald Trump.” Had anyone asked for a plan to be submitted at what was nothing more than a ceremony, and was there a framework in which it would be discussed? Of course not. Who did the president submit this plan to?

Asked by a journalist on CyBC radio on Tuesday morning, what the president had “exactly submitted at the conference,” the deputy minister for European Affairs Marilena Rarouna avoided giving a straight answer, waffling about the ceremony before repeating what was written in the Phileleftheros report, about “six proposals were submitted by our side which correspond to…” She did not tell listeners to whom these six proposals were submitted. Was it to President Trump, to Benjamin Netanyahu or to the negotiators of Hamas?

Was there any need for the president to feed the local press with this story? What purpose did it serve? In the end it ca only have embarrassed the president as it was a story full of holes that we doubt anyone took seriously.