IN THE END the rebellion against our wise political leaders, which began on April 23, was crushed by emotional blackmail more ruthless than that exercised by parents on their errant kids, and by a mass production of guilt. Whereas thousands initially crossed the dividing line, numbers have steadily dwindled, people buying the official propaganda that going to the north is the eighth deadly sin unless the purpose of their visit is to see the family house and their village church.
One group of people has defied the moral exhortations of their enlightened leaders and continue to flash passports at the pseudo-cops — compulsive gamblers, who simply cannot resist the call of the green baize table and the roulette wheel. Hunky Justice Minister Doros Theodorou could not hide his frustration at failing to get through to gamblers who not only go to the north in pursuit of pleasure, but they even stay the night as well.
Staying in the occupied north overnight is the ninth deadly sin, and it could soon also become a crime punishable by imprisonment (gamblers might perhaps be sentenced to play Russian roulette?) if human rights campaigner and freedom fighter Christos Clerides gets his gloriously unenforceable bill through the legislature.
Doros was as angry as a bear when interviewed on a radio show on Tuesday morning. “I just do not know what we can do with these people,” he said. “They just do not seem to know what they are doing or have any political understanding.”
There is a very simple solution to this problem. If Doros genuinely wants to prevent gamblers from going across and staying overnight he should open a casino in the free areas. Governments have been toying with the idea for some 15 years, but the decision to proceed has never been taken. But now opening a casino on our side has become a matter of the highest national interest and a patriotic imperative. The government should act immediately.
ALTERNATIVE Bishop of Morphou Neophytos — the one with the John Lennon specs and laid-back hippy style — stepped up his rapprochement efforts this week while his Orthodox brothers were busy poring over the accounts of the Archbishopric and wondering how to collect at least a fraction of the £33 million it is owed.
This time, however, the cool bishop’s rapprochement initiative was conducted in private. There were no cameras or journalists on hand like the last time he did his funky stuff for the reunification of the island — he went to a church in the ‘pseudo-plantation’ to conduct a service, accompanied by an army of hacks, photographers and cameramen.
The Denktator’s ‘pseudo-cops’ stopped him from conducting the service amid scuffles, and Neophytos, who has ambitions to become Archbishop, was accused of being a shameless self-publicist by his Paphos brother in God, Chrysostomos.
But this time he did not take any chances and his initiative was kept a closely guarded secret.
The Coffeeshop can reveal that cool-dude Neophytos had a secret meeting at the Ledra Palace hotel with the son and heir of the Denktator, Serdar. We do not know what the Bishop and Junior discussed, but it would seem that the former is playing for very high stakes without even setting foot in a casino. His meeting with the son of the enemy could be seen by some as a treacherous act that would wreck his ambitions for the Archbishop’s throne; but there is also a minuscule probability (about the same as the roulette ball falling on number five three times in a row) that his initiative could be applauded and therefore boost his career. But as any casino-loving Bananiot traitor could tell him, that is a risk not worth taking.
THE TRILLION Turkish lira question is this: what was the purpose of the meeting? Was the Archbishopric owed money by the ‘pseudo-plantation’ as well, and Neophytos had been assigned the task of getting it back? Or had Junior decided to convert to Christianity (at the behest of his advisers) as a show of goodwill, and wanted to find out how to go about it? Perhaps the hip bish was negotiating a return to his bishopric in occupied Morphou.
We can speculate all day about the meeting without ever coming close to the truth, but one thing is certain — if the vibes from the meeting were good and positive publicity follows, other bishops will before long be setting up meetings with Junior too. Some might even go a step higher and arrange a meeting with Senior himself.
What is the world coming to when even our bishops are becoming Turk-loving peaceniks, hell-bent on meeting and talking to the enemy? What will happen when the moneybags bishop of Kykkos realises that his noble ambition to become Archbishop could be boosted by building better relations with our Turkish Cypriot brothers? Will he cross north and start giving wads of cash to them as well?
SPEAKING of cash, Junior’s communications adviser, Kudret Akay, has been given a million bucks, raised by ‘pseudo-taxes’, for a campaign to promote the recognition of the Denktatorship, according to Mehmet Ali Talat’s mouthpiece Yeniduzen. The bucks were supposedly given to Akay’s ‘Red Cat’ agency, but Yeniduzen speculates that they could be used for Junior’s electoral campaign rather than for winning recognition. And it has a point.
A million bucks are not enough to buy recognition from the most impoverished third world country, let alone from the international community. But it’s nice that even for the most blatant cases of Denktatorial corruption a pretext, no matter how unconvincing, is provided. Strange how even the Young Turks brought in by Junior to modernise the image of the Denktatorship and bring it into the 21st century happily become beneficiaries of the antiquated Ottoman tradition of corruption.
Kudret, who lived in London for years before coming back to act as Junior’s guru and adviser, was reportedly instrumental in the decision to lift the restrictions on movement. And while this Young Turk may pose as an Anglicised free-thinking liberal, his objectives are no different from the Denktator’s. He just believes that different means should be used to achieve them.
His agency would not have received a million bucks of the Turkish Cypriot taxpayer’s money if he were not on the same wavelength as the Denktator, no matter how close he is to Junior.
THE REPORT about Kudret’s million was posted (in an English translation) on the CyprusMediaNet website, which was developed by the Cambridge Foundation for Peace and funded by USAID and UNDP through UNOPS.
The website carries translations of articles from Greek newspapers in Turkish and English and from Turkish newspapers in Greek and English. The translations from Turkish to Greek are not bad, but those from Turkish into English suck big-time. The translators are doing to the English language what the Turks have done to the Greek churches in the north.
Here are some excerpts from the the above-mentioned article in Yeniduzen: “… the one who will carry out propaganda campaigns of DP on the coming December elections”; and further down it says: “According to rumours, 1 million US dollars will be used for the recognition.” This is my fave: “Advertising North Cyprus started with 129 thousand US dollars interviews and now goes on with the broadcasts at the Turkish dailies and TV stations.”
This ‘pseudo-English’ makes our Press & Information Office translations of the Turkish newspapers look like literary masterpieces. UNOPS ought to put a warning on this website along the lines of: “You may find it difficult to understand the English translations of articles broadcast at the Turkish dailies.” UNOPS’ great service to the two communities is also a disservice to the English language.
MONEY-BAGS Bishop of Kykkos Nikiforos may have thoug
ht that after Wednesday he would move even closer to the holy grail of the Archbishop’s throne, but he suffered a sobering lesson instead, a reminder that God’s will is not always the same as the designs of bishops. What should have been his crowning glory turned a bit sour in the end.
Last Wednesday night, the lush green gardens of the Kykkos monastery were the setting for the world premiere of the oratorio ‘Love is greater than everything’, commissioned by and paid for by World Platform for Religions and Civilisations which is bankrolled by the loaded Nikiforos in his new persona as patron of the arts. It was composed by Dr Katerina Karamesini and performed by the Cyprus State Orchestra, conducted by Maciej Zoltowski.
The oratorio was pretty boring, according to those who attended, but you still have to congratulate the Bishop on his latest enterprise. It shows that apart from working for world peace and understanding, handing out money to worthy and unworthy causes, he is also contributing to the world of the arts. Surely he deserves to be the next Archbishop of the plantation?
According to the programme notes he has already made a step in that direction, since the performance was billed as being under the auspices of the “Bishop of Cyprus”. This was not the only mistake in the programme. It also omitted the doctoral title of the composer which Mrs Karamesini has demanded that newspapers use when referring to her.
INSTEAD of praising the Bishop of Cyprus, the day after the world premiere of the oratorio Politis carried a lead story about the huge deficits suffered by the Kykkos monastery — the wealthiest landowner on the plantation — in 2002. According to the report Kykkos had a deficit of just under £3m last year, despite selling real estate worth £9.2m. The previous year its deficit was only £1.1m.
As if this were not bad enough, on the same day some awkward questions were asked of Nikiforos at a Holy Synod meeting to discuss the Church’s accounts. The Bishop of Kyrenia, Pavlos, demanded that Nikiforos give a detailed breakdown of the amount listed in the monastery’s accounts under the title ‘Contributions’. According to Politis, for 2001 the monastery’s contributions were £1.46m and for 2002 they amounted to £2.18m.
Nikoforos said the totals were adequate and that he would not provide a breakdown. He is a holy man, after all, and his brothers should trust him. There’s no way he would have used monastery funds for self-promotion or to further his candidacy for the throne.
But the revelations must have been damaging to his election prospects, as they raised serious questions about his financial management abilities.
A man who is not good at financial management cannot possibly become Archbishop, no matter how spiritual, generous, visionary and cultured he is. Perhaps the financial revelations were God’s way of saying that he is unsuitable for the plantation’s top Church post. Or maybe they were just a clerical error.
DISY FάHRER Nice Nik may have been triumphantly re-elected a few weeks ago, but he has been making a complete fool of himself since then. Demanding proportional representation on the boards of semi-governmental organisations, supposedly to prevent nepotism, and accusing the government of rusfeti goes well beyond chutzpah.
For 10 years the government he was backing engaged in rampant rusfeti, distributing positions among DISY loyals as if there was no tomorrow, taking 75 per cent of the board seats (when its election strength was 33 per cent). And now he is demanding representation that reflects electoral strength!
Some say that his vociferous protests are intended to stop the government from investigating some of the more unsavoury activities of its predecessors, and that as soon as he receives assurances the investigations will stop, as will his protests. There might be an element of truth in this, given that the Fόhrer has resorted to the classic blackmail tactics used by countless officials when they find themselves in a tight spot.
He has been threatening to make ‘revelations’ if the government does not stop persecuting DISY supporters. But surely he has a moral obligation to make the revelations anyway, otherwise the persecutions will continue.
HAS THE Fόhrer lost his marbles? There are now more commissioners in DISY than there are in Brussels. On Wednesday he announced the appointment of 15 DISY Commissioners, some of whom will be supported by four deputy Commissioners, and the creation of three presidencies. Plenty of titles for the boys, and there were even two women appointed Commissioners as well.
Many former government ministers were made commissioners, so they regain some of their self-esteem, and I am happy to note that a presidency was found for former presidential commissioner for expatriates Manolis Christofides. He will be President of the Ethics Committee. Former education minister Ouranios Ioannides was made President of the Institute of Euro-democracy.
How the mighty have fallen. The former chairman of Cyprus Airways, Haris Loizides, is now Deputy Commissioner for Tourism. In the Clerides era of meritocracy and criminalisation of rusfeti, he was considered able enough to run the national carrier, but for the Fόhrer he’s apparently only good enough to be a deputy Commissioner.
There is also a Deputy Commissioner for Agricultural Development, Livestock Breeding and Fisheries. He is Georgios Tassou, and I don’t think we will be hearing very much from him. Nik has not yet decided which apparatchik will be allocated the task of transforming DISY into a Soviet-style Communist Party.
HATS OFF to Alithia editor Alecos Constantinides, the father of anti-AKEL journalism on the plantation, who has not lost his appetite for the fight against communist propaganda even after undergoing open-heart surgery. And unlike the commie leader, who went to London for his operation, Alecos had his on the plantation.
On Wednesday his daily column was devoted to rubbishing the mindless gloating of AKEL for joining World War II. The Reds held a special event on Wednesday night to mark the 60th anniversary of the “historic decision of June 16, 1943, with which the Central Committee of AKEL invited party members to sign up in the Cyprus Regiment in the war of the Allies against Hitler and fascism”.
As he pointed out, this ‘historic decision’ was taken nearly four years after the war had started. By that time, Glafcos Clerides, who had signed up to fight in 1939, had already been taken prisoner by the Germans. The Germans also occupied Athens on April 27, 1941, two year and three months before the ‘historic decision’. And non-Akelite Cypriots joined the fighting as soon as Italy attacked Greece in October 1940.
Alecos explains why AKEL’s ‘historic decision’ came so late. “On August 23, 1939, Molotov, the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany — the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. And until June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the world’s communists avoided taking a stand against Hitler and fascism. The AKEL leadership needed another two years after the invasion of the Soviet Union before it took a stand against fascism.”
NICOSIA Mayor Michael Zampelas has never been much of a politician and has found it difficult coping with the demands of his new office. Since he is he is an accountant by profession, and a very successful one, he has decided to turn the Union of Municipalities of which he is the ex officio chairman into a limited liability company. He would feel much more comfortable as chairman of a company, knowing exactly what his powers and responsibilities are, and also be able to run it in the same autocratic way he ran his business empire.
So at the l
ast meeting of the executive committee of the Union, he presented the new memorandum of association to the other members. His suggestion was that all positions in the company, including the chairman’s, would be open to whoever wanted one of the posts; elections would decide who took which position if there was more than one interested party.
But when it transpired at the meeting that one or two members were interested in the chairmanship itself, Zampelas got cold feet and his enthusiasm for changing the status of the Union evaporated. “We cannot have the chairman of the company being elected,” he announced. The reason? “There might be serious developments in the Cyprus issue over the next 12 months and I have to be in charge.”
Isn’t that what they all say?
