AS THIS IS the slowest week of the year in terms of silly news and serious gossip, because the politicians and other member’s of our elite are on holiday, our establishment is unable to provide its normal service today.
It will provide instead an abnormal service, which, unfortunately, will not feature freaks of nature, creatures from outer space, giant cucumbers or church-going cabaret owners. If some of today’s items seem a bit dated and stale it is because they are, so please do not write in to complain, because anyone who does will be banned from reading the Coffeeshop for three months.
And before any smart-ass writes to ask how this ban will be enforced, I will tell you that we have already devised an ingenious plan, involving kiosk owners, nightclub bouncers, computer geeks and the Limassol underworld. So please show a bit of tolerance because it is not easy putting together a ‘Shop’ when the crème de la crème (pardon my French) of our plantation has gone on holiday en masse.
ONE THING not affected by the holiday season is the moronic public squabbling among the government alliance parties over who will get which municipality in the forthcoming local elections. The party leaders are behaving like greedy, low-life thieves after a big robbery, all wanting to get a bigger cut of the booty so they can keep their gang members happy and show off their personal clout.
Anger and bad feeling have been reigning supreme for the last couple of months, as the gang leaders just cannot agree on an acceptable distribution of the stolen goods. Most of the grief is being caused by the once-timid Yiannakis Omirou, on a mission to prove that he can be as tough as Don Corleone in protecting the interests of his family, by demanding a bigger share of the municipalities.
Maybe it is more accurate to compare the behaviour of the party bosses to that of Mafia dons trying to extend the territory over which they can offer protection to the citizens they care so much about. Why else would you have party godfathers quarrelling over a horrific place like Latsia and Lakatamia that no sane person would ever want to be associated with, let alone be mayor of?
Then there is Paphos municipality, on which EDEK believes it has a title deed and should have one of its gang chiefs running in perpetuity, to the chagrin of the bigger families, AKEL and DIKO. The latter will even have to deal with a rebel candidate, Nik the Pitts, who now wants to be mayor of Paphos, after Paphians gave him the two-finger salute in last May’s parliamentary election.
Local elections are all about the sovereignty of the citizens and direct democracy as the Party dons will keep reminding us once the election campaign begins.
So the citizens of Paphos municipality will exercise their sovereignty by voting for the candidate they are told to by the Party godfathers who have chosen him (no chance that it is a woman), after months of horse-trading, with the main objective of keeping all government coalition partners happy, so unity can be maintained in order to re-elect the Etharch in 2008 and the mafia families can have more spoils to fight over and a five-year renewal of their protection rackets.
Now this is people power and direct democracy in action.
THERE is a very simple solution to the problem posed to the government alliance by the municipal elections. Double the number of municipalities so that there are enough to go round and keep all the party Godfathers happy. Greater Nicosia has only seven and Limassol only four. This would not only put an end to the bickering, but it would create more state jobs for the Dons to distribute among their unemployable followers. As the Bank of Cyprus would say, ‘Think about it, it can be done’.
The only party that might object is DIKO, which even for the existing municipalities under its protection cannot seem to find competent party members to propose as candidates. It suffices to say that for Nicosia municipality it has been toying with the idea of putting forward the clapped out, over the hill, DISY member Ouranios Ioannides. How sad is that?
AYIOS DHOMETIOS mayor Dr Hadjiloizou, who has been running his municipality as a partnership with his darling wife, will almost certainly be standing again as an official alliance candidate. Successful mayors like the good doctor and Mrs Hadjiloizou, who has often dealt directly with municipal business, are under no threat.
The way they have been running Ayios Dhometios is not an issue. After all, it is under the doctor’s enlightened rule that a 400-metre stretch of Gregoris Afxentiou Ave has been beautified – the asphalt on this bit of road was replaced by paving stones, a couple of traffic islands were constructed and some fancy street lights and benches were placed on it.
The budget for this project was initially set at £750,000. As the project was in progress, the mayor asked for some additional work, which raised the cost to £1.4 million. And now the contractor, is demanding an additional £700,000, over and above what he has been paid, for unforeseen expenses. This would take the cost of the project to £2.1 million, which is three times the original budget for the work.
The additional dosh demanded by the contractor is unprecedented – the maximum a contractor usually asks over and above the final cost, for unforeseen expenses, is 10 per cent, so why is this one demanding an extra 50 per cent? The mayor had no objection in giving the contractor the extra 700 grand, reportedly telling councillors who had voiced strong reservations about paying up, “why do you care, it’s not your money”.
But a group of councillors insisted that the municipality was being ripped off by the contractor and called in a representative from the Auditor-general’s office to examine the demand for an extra 700 grand. The amount the contractor was demanding was absurd, said the official and the terms and conditions under which the project was carried out are being examined by the Auditor-general.
Whether they can make any heads or tails of it is another matter. Apparently, the mayor does not usually put things in writing and there is a suspicion he may have ordered 700 grand worth of extra work orally. Or maybe his wife was administering the project.
THE WAY different organisations in the public sector operate deserves closer study. While Ayios Dhometios is squandering public money, the Larnaca Water Board had an advertisement inviting tenders for the supply of one lap-top. Yes, it took out a newspaper ad requesting offers for the supply of a ‘Notebook Computer’.
The lunacy does not end there. Anyone crazy enough to submit a tender would have to pay £10 to obtain an application form (non-refundable), while the tender has to be accompanied by a banker’s cheque or bank guarantee, covering 10 per cent of its value. The Board, states that the ad, is not obliged to accept the lowest offer, or any other offer. In other words it can collect a tenner from 10 companies and not buy a lap-top.
The bit about a bank guarantee needed for the privilege of supplying a single lap-top, is difficult to comprehend. Is the supplier going to pay for it and needs to prove he has the funds? The work-hours wasted to buy one lap-top – preparing advert, processing tenders, seeing the salesmen of the short-listed companies, and the meetings to decide the best tender – not to mention the cost of the ads, would amount to a lot more money than £30 pounds the Board might save by getting the most competitively-priced notebook.
No doubt the Board will say that it is merely following the procedure. But if it is the procedure, should it not also have asked for tenders from newspapers, to secure the most competitively priced advertising rates, before choosing where to publish its ad?
I HEAR that our new ambassador-designate to Washington, Sotos Zakheos, could
be back in Cyprus before the end of the year to appear in a court a case. He has been personally sued by a former employee of the Foreign Ministry, for libellous slander, after Zak had written a letter to the Ombudswoman, allegedly, disparaging his subordinate’s reputation and abilities.
This is the culmination of a bitter row between the two, which was sparked when Zak decided to transfer his subordinate to Washington. For two years before the transfer, the man had been following and reading up on all the treaties and deliberations regarding the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, having been told he would be sent to Geneva as Cyprus’ permanent representative there.
But when the transfers were decided by Zak, he was told that he would be going to Washington, while someone else, with no knowledge of the non-proliferation agenda, would be sent to Geneva. A big row ensued and the aggrieved official left the foreign ministry. The man who was sent to Geneva was recalled to Nicosia just after a year, Zak having decided that his knowledge of the complex non-proliferation agenda was inadequate.
THE GIGANTISM of the Makarios era has been fully revived and rehabilitated by the visionary leadership of the Ethnarch, who has made Cyprus an international player once again, boxing well above its weight in world diplomacy.
And with the go-getting Giorgos Lillikas playing Andrei Gromyko at the foreign ministry, our plantation is threatening to become the centre of the universe once again. Lilli seized the opportunity provided by Israel’s attack on the Lebanon to put himself and Cyprus on the international centre stage.
First, he submitted his very own peace proposal for the Middle East to the Rome Conference, which, he assured, remained on the table and could be used when a ceasefire had been signed. A week after the ceasefire, the Lilli plan appears to be as dead as the A-plan, probably because the envious foreign ministers of the big states do not want to give any credit to the rising star of world diplomacy.
Then, our government said that it would offer troops to the Lebanon peacekeeping force, if it were invited to do so by the UN. A bit disingenuous, considering that the UN has been waiting for countries to volunteer troops for the force. The latest rumour is that we have volunteered to send two National Guard officers, which was a big mistake, as this undermined Lilli’s gigantism campaign – to show the world that we can play big, in spite of our size and tiny population.
But all is not lost, because now Lilli has thought of another trick to put us in the limelight. He has sent out letters to his counterpart and the UN putting Cyprus at the disposal of the Lebanon peacekeeping troops.
It remains to be seen whether our offer will be given any consideration. After being snubbed a few more times Lilli and his boss may eventually realise that international politics is very much like sex – size matters. And we should accept that, diplomatically speaking, we are not very well-endowed, even if our technique is pretty advanced.
TALIBAN-STYLE journalism has found a home at our top circulation daily Phil, the editor of which, Takis Kounnafis, has been practising it with great zeal in his Sunday column. Takis, who, back in the eighties, had also served as the editor of the EDEK mouthpiece, Ta Nea – the most pro-Gaddafi paper outside Libya – has been regularly disparaging critics of the Ethnarch and calling for less free speech.
A couple of months ago, he declared that all those who had voted for the A-plan were treacherous agents of foreign interests. When he was challenged, in writing, by the former mayor of Nicosia Lellos Demetriades, a self-confessed ‘yes’ voter, the patriotic Takis insisted that his sweeping generalisation was absolutely correct.
The criticism of the government for the cancellation of Manifesta, he wrote a couple of weeks later, was an attempt by the “pseudo-arty types” to discredit the Cyprus Republic, “because they had failed to impose the Annan plan through cultural gimmicks”.
On July 3, he accused columnists in Greece who criticised our Ethnarch’s foreign policies of being the “recipients of bribes”. These hacks, according to Takis, “distort history” and “exceed the most blatant Turkish propaganda”. These “attacks against Cyprus” (the attacks were against Tassos), he wrote, were “no different from what the junta was accusing Cyprus of, in order to conceal it was in cahoots with Turkey”.
In summary, only paid foreign agents criticise the Ethnarch who has the inalienable right to dictate Greece’s foreign policy, and any Greek journalist who questions this right is a junta supporting Turk-lover.
In the same column, he offered a bit of advice to all those “who insist on citing the idiotic claim that their every action can be justified by the concepts of ‘free speech’ and ‘expression of opinion’.” He then quoted something the judge of the European Court Loucis Loucaides had said about national treason.
Why all this beating about the bush? If the not-so-liberal Takis wants to impose a Libyan-type one-party state, in which nobody will be allowed to say anything against the Ethnarch, he should say so openly and we will support his noble campaign.
LAST SUNDAY, this champion of Libyan democracy took up the issue of the Panicos Chrysanthou film, Akamas, which the Education Ministry partly funded, claiming there was confusion about ‘artisitic freedom’ and ‘artistic expression’.
While he recognised the right of an artist to have his own views about things, he wrote: “It is absurd, for the Ministry of Education of the Cyprus Republic, to subsidise any propaganda which undermines the foundations Cyprus society and rapes historical truth, adopting the Turkish and British distortions, on the grounds of ‘freedom of artistic expression’ that is not subject to any form of censorship”.
From what I know, Takis has not seen the film, but that is not the point, because in Libya, there is no way Colonel Gaddafi would have subsidised a film that he was not allowed to censor.
HAPPY to report that a customer called in to tell us that he saw the unsmiling government spokesman, Christodoulos Pashiardis not only smiling but also looking very ‘cool and relaxed’. He did not provide us with photographic evidence about this extraordinary sighting, which took place at the Aegeon Tavern in Nicosia, on Saturday, August 5 at 10.30 in the evening. We checked with the restaurateur, who confirmed that Pashiardis was not only smiling, but on two occasions had laughed out loud. We apologise for suggesting that the man never smiled.
