ALL OUR countrymen and countrywomen suffering from depression or other psychological ailments caused by the drawn out, all-pervasive, soul-destroying election campaign, can throw their drugs in the bin because today it all comes to an end.
To be more precise, today is not quite the end, but as Churchill said, it is the beginning of the end (or was it the end of the beginning?). We still have to put up with a few more days of election post-mortems on the television and radio stations and in the press, as each party chieftain explains why the election result constituted a mega-triumph for his party, but by next Sunday it should be all over.
Hopefully, by next Sunday all the Nicosia billboards will be cleared of the posters of Sotiris Drakos, Marios Hannides, Nicos Tornaritis etc., all of whom have been staring at like a narcissistic ruler of a one-party state. But Nicosians should count themselves lucky. They did not have to suffer the sight of the over-sized head of Dinos Michaelides, with its sinister Big Brother gaze, like poor old Limassolians had to endure wherever they went.
Sorry, I digress. In today’s Election Special, we will be looking at the low points of the campaign, the main issues, the big rows, the personalities, the party advertisements, the leaflets, before we advise you how to make an educated choice in the polling booth.
So, if you are suffering from depression or the election campaign blues, do not go any further because what you read may aggravate your condition. We hope to resume normal services next Sunday, reverting to tales of ordinary madness, as my psychiatrist has assured me that all I need is a couple more sessions to overcome my compulsive election campaign disorder.
RETURNING to the election posters, we should not be too harsh on the candidates who put up giant-sized posters of themselves, because these served psychological rather than political purposes. The campaign was an opportunity for obscure individuals, who nobody apart from friends and family had ever heard of or seen before, to inform their fellow-citizens that they exist.
It does not matter that from tomorrow nobody will see or hear them again because as candidates they had their two weeks of fame, which is significantly more than the 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol liked to peddle.
My psychiatrist informs me that some people have a deep psychological need to be acknowledged by their fellow citizens and by standing as candidates, individuals were satisfying this need.
It was no coincidence that most of the candidates adorning the billboards did not have a chance in hell of winning a seat, said my psychiatrist, adding that the exposure was a form of therapy for these sad and insecure nobodies. If they were cured by the publicity, good for them; we wish them a happy life and look forward to seeing their posters again in five years’ time.
THIS HAS been the longest running (three months), most boring (only because it lasted longer), election campaign, featuring the largest number of parties (11) and candidates (485) ever. Of these candidates just over 10 per cent will win a seat in the legislature.
Lack of measure and lack of perspective is what it’s all about. A country of 800,000 people has 11 political parties and 485 candidates for 56 seats. Only the Turkish Cypriots are worse than us – they also have 11 parties and there are only 250,000 of them, including settlers. I don’t know how many seats the pseudo-parliament has.
When the ratio of candidates to voters is applied to a normal country you get an understanding of our lunacy. There are about 500,000 registered voters which means there is one candidate for every thousand voters. If the same ratio applied to a country with 50 million voters, you would have 50,000 candidates.
A LOT OF money was spent by the parties on advertising but the standard was the worst ever: a kitsch festival. It was as if the art of advertising had been taken back 30 years, just like politics and public debate, under the enlightened rule of Tassos I.
AKEL’s slogan was “Together, now and forever”, which is about as appealing a prospect as death. EDEK, which did a rap song for its TV advert, used the slogan “I want EDEK strong, for Cyprus”, which ignored the fact that Cyprus had done pretty well all those decades that EDEK was the weakest party in the House. In fact a strong EDEK under Dr Faustus could have been disastrous for the country. And the same applies to his cloned successor.
DISY must have spent the most money on its advertising campaign which appealed directly to voters with the slogan “You deserve more power”. It has a melodramatic feel with its focused on rising prices and how difficult it is for young couple to buy a house of their own. This issue gave rise to the best newspaper advert.
A couple is pictured on a bench, hugging each other and looking very melancholic. Under the picture was the following headline: “We love each other…. How will we start a family without a house?” Having sex might be a useful first step. And contrary to what DISY believes, it is possible to have sex and a family in rented accommodation.
SANCTIMONIOUS tree-hugger, Giorgos Perdikis accused DISY of stealing the Green party’s election slogan, “Send a message”, because DISY came up with the equally imaginative, “Use your vote to send a message” and “Send a message for a better future”.
Only Perdikis could have got wound up because someone was using his party’s pitifully hackneyed slogan. Mr Moral Perfection accused DISY of a “violation of the unwritten rules of political ethics”.
This was nothing compared to the other gaffe committed by DISY’s advertisers. Its main campaign slogan, appealing directly to the voters, “You deserve more” (Axizis perissotera), is the slogan used by American Express in all its Cyprus advertising. In contrast to the pompous Perdikis, American Express did not complain about the use of its slogan, preferring, instead to send a message to DISY, which said “We love each other….”
TOP AWARD for the best election pamphlet must go to DIKO, which was centred on the rather ironic message, “Cyprus will not turn back”. If Cyprus went any further back than where the Ethnarch has taken us, we would be under a colonial government again.
The 12-page, full-colour pamphlet promotes the worship of the one and only DIKO leader, Ethnarch Tassos, who is not even standing in the elections. It features four pictures of the great man, but not a single one of junior, and informs us that he, being a Superman politician, can single-handedly save Cyprus. “Strengthened DIKO means a strengthened Tassos Papadopoulos. It means the shielding of the Cyprus Republic.”
So if the Turkish army tries to advance, fear not, because we will have the strengthened Ethnarch to repel it and save the Republic.
On the back there is quote of the Superman Ethnarch. “Give me the power, with the power of DIKO, I can safeguard the interests of Cyprus and its people.” This is the kind of language used by fascist dictators.
Of course, our Ethnarch is neither a fascist nor a dictator, but resorts to this crude mythologising of himself and his powers because he is a bit of an egomaniac. This is why his party has made the referendum and the great leader’s tear-stained speech (excerpts on the TV adverts) the central point of its campaign.
It was the only way for the Ethnarch to feature prominently in an election in which he was not taking part.
ANOTHER ironic feature of the leaflet was the pre-1974 picture of Kyrenia harbour on its centre-spread. There was no caption or slogan to accompany the picture, not even an ‘I don’t forget’. One suggestion for a caption is: “This is the closest you will get to Kyrenia for as long as Superman is safeguarding the interests of Cyprus and its people”.
THE UNDISPUTED personality of the election w
as Nicholas Papadopoulos, Tassou, who received more TV airtime than any newcomer candidate. The Ethnarch pulled out all the stops for junior – big parties, tours of ministries, TV appearances, billboards all over Nicosia – and he is a dead cert to be elected.
Junior seems to be a chip off the old block, incapable of taking any criticism. His run-in with Dr Demetris Papapetrou of the United Democrats on a Mega chat show illustrated that he has inherited daddy’s colossal ego and arrogance. Papapetrou claimed that Junior would be elected a deputy because he used two big advantages – daddy’s name and his family’s wealth.
“When you are elected a deputy, and you are talking to youngsters about equal opportunities, will you be able to look them in the eyes?” the good doctor asked him.
Junior’s response was that the doctor was lowering the level of debate. He then played the sympathy card, claiming that being the son of the Ethnarch had its disadvantages as well. The poor little rich boy explained how some media were constantly attacking him as a way of getting at this dad.
But the doc, unmoved by the hardships junior faced because of who he was, continued to wind him up. Did Junior know that a candidate spending more than £800 on his election campaign was breaking the law?
This was when the heir to the Ethnarchy lost his rag, shouting that at the doctor and demanding that he be given a videotape of the show so he could sue Papapetrou for libel.
He insisted that he never spent more than 800 bananas on his campaign and we believe him. If mum and dad spent a few tens of thousands of bananas, he was not to blame. He is so like his father, I am certain now that he will safeguard our interests as ably as his dad when he succeeds him as Ethnarch.
THE MOST pretentious candidate award has to go to EDEK’s Nicos Charalambous, one of the many actors standing for election. His responses to the Politis questionnaire which most candidates answered were exactly what you’d expect from an actor.
He fasts “only spiritually”, he is afraid of “myself and of death as well as the ambient stupidity”, and he goes on holiday ‘to his bed.
Asked if he would publicise his capital assets, he responded: “What capital assets? How can you publicise something that does not exist? Unless you mean my talent. That has been public from a long time ago, exposed to the sun and to thunderstorms”
Charalambous stars in the Sigma soap opera Vasiliki, but his acting talent seems to be fading, probably because excessive exposure to the sun. If he had put some sun protection cream on it he may have preserved it a bit longer.
APART from actors, several hacks are also standing for election today, but none from the Cyprus Propaganda Corporation because they want to preserve their reputation for impartially, independently and objectively worship the floor our Ethnarch stands on.
All these qualities were evident during a TV interview of the DISY führer on Tuesday night. The three hacks and moderator, the Tassos-worshipping Dinos Eliades, one half of the famous Eliades brothers comic act, were like a pack of wolves spoiling to tear poor old Nik apart.
Any criticism he made of the government, they questioned before firing salvoes at him. If they were this aggressive with all the guests, it would have been fine, but they never show such open hostility to pro-government politicians.
I suppose they were all doing their best to boost their chances of promotion, which greatly increase when the hacks are nasty to the Führer.
THE ISSUE of the campaign was without a doubt the Annan plan, despite the fact that it has been pronounced dead and buried months ago and was rejected in the referendum two years ago.
The way the pro-government parties were going on about the plan – was it dead, was it on the table, did DISY still support it, would it be brought back with cosmetic changes or would it come wrapped in red ribbons? About 80 per cent of the election campaign was taken up discussing the plan that was consigned to the dustbin, two years ago.
And the people who kept bringing it up were CyBC hacks looking for promotion and the politicians who campaigned for its rejection. Make any sense? It is not supposed to.
WE HAD said at the start that we would advise you on how to make an educated choice at the polling booth today. Unfortunately, we have run out of space so we will publish our advice, on who you should vote, next Sunday.
We would like to use what little space is left, to remind the DIKO voters among our readers, to make sure that they vote for number 16, ‘Nicholas Papadopoulos, Tassou’ and not any other Nicholas Papadopoulos who might be on the DIKO ballot paper.
After all the disadvantages he had to overcome during the campaign it is the least junior deserves.
