IN THE end, Archbishop Chrysostomos and his namesake the Bishop of Paphos succeeded in promoting the Abbot of Kykkos, Nikiforos, to the rank of bishop, without the latter surrendering control of the finances of the wealthiest and most powerful monastery on the plantation.
He is not a normal bishop, as his title (Bishop of Kykkos) is honorary and he will not have a vote on the Holy Synod, but he is now of higher rank.
The first attempt to give Nikiforos a higher status and profile, last year, failed after he flatly refused to give up his control of the monastery in exchange for promotion.
No fancy title would have given him a tenth of the power he already enjoyed as abbot. Being in control of millions of pounds and administering the real estate holdings of the biggest landowner in the plantation translates into a hell of a lot of power and influence.
But earlier this week a compromise formula was found which allowed Nikiforos to keep control of Kykkos’ millions. Three bishops opposed it — the unlikeable Bishop Pavlos (Kyrenia) went as far as to claim that the formula had been proposed by expert Church lawyers who had received a huge fee in order to come up with a compromise that satisfied their clients’ designs, but went against the charter of the Church.
All the bickering is related to the fight over the succession of the Archbishop, with Nikiforos enjoying the support of the worldly, old school bishops — hard-nosed businessmen — who do not want someone too spiritual like the popular Bishop of Limassol to succeed the ailing Chrys.
And there is wisdom in their choice — you can’t have someone concerned with the salvation of the soul and other spiritual fluff in charge of the biggest and wealthiest business corporation of the plantation.
AN INDICATION of the power and influence that Nikiforos wields as Abbot of Kykkos was the sycophantic way in which most newspapers welcomed his elevation to bishop. Phileleftheros, a major financial beneficiary of the generosity of Kykkos monastery over the years, welcomed Nikiforos’ election, which “will enrich (a Freudian slip?) the Church hierarchy”. The monastery’s “spiritual and other work, all these years, constitute an eloquent confirmation of his quality”, an editorial concluded.
Simerini, whose owner Zeus is a close friend and business associate of Nikiforos (the Zeus group’s palatial premises are built on land leased from the monastery), also waxed lyrical, saying he was “top favourite” to succeed the Archbishop. It praised his public profile which was “characterised by modesty and moderacy”.
Even the atheist Marxists of Haravghi praised this “model cleric” whose “rich (another Freudian slip?) and varied work is greatly appreciated”. His “behaviour is marked by Christian love, modesty and tolerance,” said the paper. We do not know if Haravghi has also benefited from Kykkos’ largesse.
Only Politis featured a critical article and that was written by Antenna journalist Aristides Viketos, who questioned Nikiforos’ commitment to spiritual matters, saying he would never have served as bishop if this meant surrendering the power he enjoyed as Kykkos chief executive officer.
As for this establishment, which has never benefited from the legendary generosity of Kykkos monastery — apart from getting a bottle of Kykkos zivania every Christmas — we can give it to you straight: can a cleric who used to dye his hair and well-trimmed beard be eligible for the top Church position? It suffices to say that when Nikiforos decided to stake a claim for the role of Archbishop his jet-black facial hair suddenly turned grey, although he continues to have his beard trimmed, eschewing the ‘unkempt look’ favoured by the more spiritual Church leaders.
IT IS NOT for nothing that our legislature has come to be known as the house of gossips. One deputy, Christos ‘Torquemada’ Pourgourides, promised to reveal the name of a “very prominent” member of our society who had illegally exported money from the plantation. TV stations and newspapers went berserk about the news and everyone waited for Wednesday’s House Watchdog Committee meeting to hear the revelations.
When it was revealed that the amount of money illegally transferred was 30 grand you realised that the whole story was bit of joke. Directors of public companies had bought apartments in Manhattan for millions of greenbacks and our gossips were raising a fuss about the goat-thieves. The committee did not make its revelations after the intervention of the Attorney-general, who said his office was already investigating the matter.
The gossip dimension is the most interesting aspect of the story. Apparently, the person who tipped off Torquemada had a real grudge against the “very prominent” person. His daughter had gone through an acrimonious divorce with the son of the “very prominent” person and the informer wanted to get his own back on his son-in-law’s father.
BEING partial to a bit of gossip, I went to purchase the Phil group’s quarterly rag for men, Omikron Andras, and ended up having a row with the newsagent. The rag is advertised with a cover price of £3 or £4.95 with gift. As I did not want the gift — a girlie calendar — which was packed with the rag, I told the newsagent to take the gift and give me the rag on its own for three quid.
“We can’t do that,” he said. “Why not?” Surely it was up to the buyer to decide if he wanted the gift or not, I tried to argue. But the newsagent told me that this was not how it worked.
There was no copies left without the gift, so I was obliged to buy the rag with the crappy gift I did not want, at an extra cost of £1.95. What are those spineless layabouts also known as the Consumer Association doing about this? Why are we being forced to buy a gift — which cannot be described as a gift at all if we have to pay for it — by the rag?
THE RED HOT party, Red Club, organised by the Phil group, eight days ago, did not prove a great success, the live band failing to liven up the proceedings. Incidentally, the group CEO Nick Pattichis was not wearing a red outfit as we had reported.
One bit of club news that has not been reported is that Generalissimo Kouros has invested some of his hard-earned cash in the new Gate Club, in Nicosia’s Stassinos Avenue. Kouros and his partners must have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in renovating the club, which he regularly frequents together with his entourage.
In fact, in one corner of the club there is a ‘suite’ with comfy sofas and armchairs that is reserved for Kouros and his courtiers, such as the Cyprus Airways chairman Haris Loizides. You know when the great man and his friends are there because plainclothes cops stand guard outside the suite.
Now investing money in a club is understandable but why a man of Kouros’ age would want to frequent a club for youngsters, playing deafeningly loud music is one of the great unanswered questions of our time.
MEGA TV continues its attempts at sensational news but with mixed results. This week they featured a mother who claimed that her two under-age daughters were being sexually harassed by the 70-year-old owner of her neighbourhood bakery, whenever they went to buy bread.
The reporter not only declared the baker guilty but also demanded that he was put in prison immediately. Meanwhile, the mother, in an interview with Mega, for which her face was blackened, said she did not want to report the old man because a court case would be a traumatic experience for her daughters. Appearing on telly and making allegations is obviously less traumatic for her daughters and at least she secured a TV sentence against the beast.
At the risk of being accused of being insensitive, this behaviour strikes me as a touch idiotic. If your two young daughters are being sexually harassed by the owner of a bakery, do you go and tell a TV station or do you simply tell your kids never to set foot in the bakery again? You might even go and give the culprit a good beating, but why go to a TV station and attract attention to your kids if you want to spare them further trauma?
SIGMA TV boasted on Tuesday night that it is well ahead of its competitors in the viewer ratings. It pointed to the latest figures showing it had widened its lead over second-placed Antenna. Its news show was by far the most popular (37.6 per cent), and it had the most programmes in the top ten ratings list.
The station’s explanation, on the Tuesday news, for its popularity was a classic. “The objective of the station, from the start of its operation, has been to provide quality.”
Strange. Whenever I zap into Sigma, quality is not a word that readily springs to mind. Rubbish for the brain-dead would have been a more objective description of its quality output.
Of course, if this what people want to watch and it is making piles of money for Zeus, who are we to knock. As the Hollywood mogul once said: “Nobody ever lost a buck by underestimating public taste” (and intelligence, I hasten to add).
WHILE all the parties have put a moratorium on public statements about the presidential elections, politicians seem to be talking about nothing else. DIKO boss Tassos Papadopoulos, for instance, has stated that he will not talk about the elections. But his loyal lieutenants, Nik the Pitts and Andreas Angelides never miss an opportunity to tell us that Tassos must be the presidential candidate of the AKEL-DIKO-KISOS axis.
As for the DISY fuhrer, he has embarked on a plantation-wide charm offensive, grandiosely described as a “dialogue with society”. His party apparently wants to find out what citizens want, as if it didn’t know.
People want special favours — help to get a state job, and a high salary for a minimum amount of work — as DISY deputy Demetris Syllouris pointed out in an outburst of candour. But there is a sneaking suspicion that this charm offensive has more to do with the fuhrer’s presidential ambitions than any real concern about what people want. He is testing the water.
He should be warned that yet another DISY presidential hopeful has come out of the closet and is involved in contacts aimed at promoting his candidacy. Former DISY leader Yiannakis Matsis is back, claiming that the people are clamouring for him.
NOW THAT the noise about the dog-eating Chinese students has died down, the paper which broke the story has concentrated on another related topic that has been close to its big heart for several months now. In its Wednesday edition, Phileleftheros broke another story about the allegedly immoral habits of Chinese students in Cyprus.
According to the report, a “pretty”, female Chinese student, “instead of being at her desk, was roaming the central streets of Nicosia and booking appointments, on her mobile phone, with customers who would visit her apartment for sex”. But on Tuesday a cop, posing as a customer, made an appointment and met her outside Woolworth’s store. The paper added: “According to an eye-witness, the cops asked her if she was ready for sex and she replied that, because she had her period she could only give a massage…. Many condoms were found in her possession and, according to reports, she was charging her customers £20.”
The cop revealed his identity and took the woman to the police station. It was later established that she had not been attending college this year, and the police had set in motion the procedures for her deportation as an illegal immigrant. Like the dog story, this heartwarming tale was written by the same reporter, Michalis Hadjivasilis — the police force’s semi-official spokesman — who was trying to protect his source, in a majestically incompetent way.
In his idiotic story, he claimed that an eye-witness had heard the student tell the cops that she could not have sex because she had her period! Was she shouting when she said this or did the eye-witness have bionic ears? Or perhaps a group of bystanders had gathered round when the cop was asking her if she was ready for sex? And according to whose reports did the intrepid news-hound establish that she was charging her customers £20 a visit?
The story could only have come from Hadjivasilis’ cop informers and he should try a bit harder next time to conceal the fact. He could say that he was passing by while the arrest was being made, or that Phil has purchased an Echelon spying system and can eavesdrop on any conversation.
THIS was not the first time Hadjivasilis had published a story on the theme of young Chinese students who own mobile phones and work as vice girls. Several months ago, the cops set up a sting to catch a 26-year-old Chinese student who was, allegedly, having sex for money.
The investigating officer, requesting a remand order against the woman and her Chinese boyfriend, claimed the woman, who was allegedly caught in flagrante with a police stooge in Paralimni, was part of a prostitution network in which many Chinese students were involved.
The case was reported on the front-page of Phileleftheros, under the headline “Poor finances force Chinese student into prostitution”. The person who wrote the headline obviously did not read the story, which said nothing about the Chinese student being poor — perhaps eye-witnesses had suggested this to the headline writer.
Nor had it been proved in a court that she was actually involved in prostitution. The boyfriend was later charged by the police for living off immoral earnings, but nothing had been proved at the time.
Not that the story published by the plantation’s most authoritative anti-Chinese rag was any more reliable than the headline above it. Hadjivasilis, who seems to be on the same intellectual level as the cops who feed him stories, shows a remarkable contempt for facts.
He wrote in his report: “The root of the evil can be found in Nicosia, where the Chinese women, who are being procured, live and are attending colleges. All have mobile phones so they could arrange their erotic appointments easily and without being noticed.” Talk about generalisations and poetic licence.
EMPLOYING the same ingenious deduction techniques used by Hadjivasilis in his crime reporting, we could say that there is a large network of Nicosia cops, eager to pose as customers of female Chinese students with mobile phones. And only a fool would believe that these zealous cops make the arrests of members of the network of mobile phone users before testing their professional standards first. Incidentally, the fact that the cops and Hadjivasilis mention that a suspected vice girl is Chinese does smack a bit of racism — is it not enough to report that a foreign student had been arrested for soliciting?
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
