“IT IS inconceivable that the mayor of Nicosia, the last divided city of Europe, would not have anti-occupation sensitivities,” said the Government Spokesman, Christodoulos Pashiardis, 10 days ago in what was interpreted as a dig at the AKEL mayoral candidate Eleni Mavrou, a shameless, yes-voting supporter of the satanic plan.
The talk about “anti-occupation sensitivities” raged for days, without anyone bothering to define what they were and who possessed them. Were you born with them, taught them at school, were they instilled in you by your family or could you have a sensitivities micro-chip placed in your brain by a government doctor?
How would people who did not have them in their genes, paid no attention in school, came from a broken family and did not visit state hospitals go about acquiring the ‘anti-occupation sensitivities’? Can you buy a ‘teach-yourself sensitivities pack’ from a bookshop and a periptero or do you need brain surgery to be cured of anti-occupation insensitivity syndrome?
We shall be putting these questions to the Government Spokesman during his briefing session next week, because I think we all need to know what we can do to obtain these sensitivities. It would also give Ms Mavrou the opportunity to cure herself, if she is to have a chance of becoming the first female mayor of the last divided capital in the world.
THE QUESTION our establishment will try to answer today is ‘how does one know if he or she has suitable anti-occupation sensitivities’. I say suitable, because excessive anti-occupation sensitivities, while commendable, could be a big handicap.
For instance, if we elected an over-sensitive Nicosia mayor, who started sobbing and wailing every time he saw the dividing line, and Turkish flags flying across the road from his municipality’s boundaries, he is not going to do a lot of work when he gets into the Town Hall. And if he needs a tranquiliser to calm down every time his sensitivities get the better of him, he will not be the most productive mayor.
And what would foreign dignitaries think if, during the obligatory tour of the divided capital, as soon as the mayor climbed up the steps of the guard-post at the end of Ledra Street and saw the symbols of the occupation across the road, he broke down in tears? How embarrassing would that be? What would foreign guests think?
AFTER SOME research we have managed to compile a tell-tale list of signs that prove one has the sensitivities Pash spoke about. It is not a comprehensive list as sensitivities can be quite subjective.
Every time you see the hideous ‘TRNC’ flag on the Kyrenia mountain range you get the urge to strap explosives on your body and go on a suicide mission in the north
You have Lazaros Mavros as your spiritual guide by listening to his radio show every morning and reading his daily column in Simerini, without fail
You do not turn off the radio when DIKO deputy Zacharias Koulias is talking
You choke and feel like crying every time Kyrenia is mentioned
You have not taken off the ‘OXI’ sticker from your car windscreen
You see every Turk or Turkish Cypriot as bloodthirsty, baby-eating monster
You attend all anti-occupation rallies, and take a ‘Den Xechno’ placard, if you can remember where you had put it
You hate the guts of Michalis Papapetrou
When you meet a foreigner, you automatically tell him about the invasion, the occupation, the flagrant violation of our human rights by Turkey and how the international community had done nothing for Cyprus because of its double standards
You have a picture of Spyros Kyprianou on top of your bed, in your wallet, or as a screen-saver on your PC in order to stay focused on the liberation of Kyrenia. If you have his picture, because like me you think he was Cyprus’ greatest ever leader, this does not count as a proper anti-occupation sensitivity.
THE SENSITIVITIES business shook the AKEL-DIKO alliance for the municipal elections but the Ethnarch’s intervention just before he left for Finland patched things up. It was also interpreted as official Ethnarchic forgiveness to all those traitors among our countrymen who had voted in favour of the A-plan.
“It would be a big step backwards in our course until today, if the rivalry and the arguments as regards the different positions of citizens on the issue of the referendum, were revived,” he said. A strange comment, considering the guy has done everything he can for the past two years to prevent us making even a small step forward by refusing to leave the referendum era.
But he is willing to forgive the yes-voting traitors for the sake of his alliance with the AKEL, which would ensure him a second term as Ethnarch. His comment was welcomed by his commie backers, who then attacked poor old Pashiardis and implied that his views did not express the government. The “person most eligible to express the government’s views is the President and not Pashiardis,” said the AKEL spokesman.
Under the government of change, and the greater democratisation of our society, even the role of the Government Spokesman has changed – during his official briefings of the press, he expresses his wife’s views rather than those of the government.
NEXT WEEK, we will have the first round of the elections for a new Archbishop, something that does not happen very often; the last time we had them was 29 years ago.
Most politicians have shown an unhealthy level of interest in these elections, openly supporting the moneybags bishop of Kykkos, Nikiforos, who has probably spent more on his campaign than a US presidential candidate.
The staunchest supporters of Nikiforos are the atheists of the communist party AKEL, the a phenomenon which every devout, church-going Christian should view with suspicion. Anyone who has the support of atheist, anti-Church commies has got to be unsuitable to be Archbishop. Yet the Commissar was the first politician to come out in favour of Nikiforos and has openly instructed his flock to vote for him
On Friday, a news conference was held by the supporters of Nikiforos and these included former presidente Glafcos, his sidekick generalissimo Kouros, several deputies from AKEL, DIKO and DISY, former ministers, mayors, former mayors as well as a couple of clapped out actors.
Not content with just politicians endorsing his candidacy, Bishop Moneybags also had four chairmen of football clubs – Apoel, Omonia, Anorthosis, Olympiakos – on his panel of supporters. Are football chairmen, clueless about spiritual issues, really suitable to offer us guidance on who would make a good Archbishop? Does Nikiforos think there are people who will vote for him because he was endorsed by Apoel?
THERE are two main reasons Nikiforos has attracted such high profile support – politics and money. People like Glafcos and the Commissar support the Moneybags bishop because they see him as much more moderate on the Cyprob than his main rival, Limassol Bishop Athanasios a dyed in the wool Orthodox fundamentalist, who could establish a Taliban-like regime.
The truth is that Nikif is neither moderate nor hard-line – he would happily be whatever helped him become Archbishop. If it means alternating between the two, he has no qualms about doing it.
Moollah has probably played a bigger factor. The political parties every year receive hundreds of thousands of pounds in assistance from Kykkos monastery, which is the wealthiest organisation in Cyprus. The least they could do was support their financial benefactor when he needed their help.
This is where the football clubs come in also. Apoel’s training facilities are on Kykkos bishopric land for which they pay nothing. Also, like the parties, cash strapped clubs often go to Nikif with their begging bowls and never leave empty-handed. They feel obliged to show their gratitude to their
benefactor.
Could you call the guy a benefactor, considering that the money he so generously giving to worthy causes is not his. It belongs to the monastery of which he is a sort of manager rather than the main shareholder.
APART from the politicians and football chairmen Nikif also has the support of our esteemed intelligentsia. Authors, teachers, actors, academics, doctors, theatre folk, engineers, journalists, architects signed a document supporting his candidacy. This was because Nikif “fights internationally for justice for Cyprus and uncompromisingly supports a truly just and viable solution of the Cyprus problem”.
The most shocking thing about this document is the number of talentless scribblers who call themselves authors. On the plantation you only have to write a supermarket shopping list to be classed as an author and gain membership to the Union of Cyprus Authors. Since when is Antigone Papapdoulou, the DIKO deputy, an author?
And why are teachers so embarrassed to call themselves teachers? In the list all the teachers call themselves “educationalists”, presumably because it sounds more important.
THE REST of the candidates do not have the money to secure such prestigious support and stage big election campaigns. What the pious Athanasios lacks in funds he more than compensates with a big circle of zealots who are fanatically campaigning on his behalf. These guys have the zealous commitment of fanatical activists and have become quite irritating with their pushiness and tone of moral superiority.
This is why our establishment would urge any true Christian to back Bishop of Paphos, Chrysostomos – a bruiser without airs and graces, without any debilitating spirituality or delusions of moral superiority. The Church needs a pragmatic leader, with anti-occupation sensitivities and not some pious, Taliban-style monk with an army of fanatics under his control and Kokos Eliades as his spokesman.
WE HAVE run out of space to comment about the resignation of the Minister of Defence Fivos Klokkaris, who lasted in his post for just three months. The official reason he gave for quitting was that he had serious health problems that prevented him from the exercising his duties as well as he would have liked.
Apparently he had very strong back pains. Now this is a general, who had served as deputy chief of the National Guard we are talking about. If there was a war, would he have told his soldiers I am not coming to battle because of my back pains? Of course not, so why is he using such a lame excuse to get out of his responsibilities to his Ethnarch and his country? This is not how you would expect a soldier to behave.
