WE HAD originally planned to feature a list of predictions for 2007 today, keeping in tradition with previous years, but unfortunately, we were unable to find any clairvoyant or coffee-cup reader for the amount of money we were offering. Even in the north, where there is an abundance of coffee-cup readers, they are asking silly money for a couple of hours work, so we decided not to have any predictions today.
After all, we know more or less what is going to happen in 2007 as the Ethnarch will still be in power – discussions about what will be on the agenda of talks that would prepare the ground for the new peace initiative are set to continue in the new year. We will continue to piss off our EU partners by trying to punish Turkey for its occupation, the government will carry on giving lessons about political morality to the world and the DISY Führer will remain public enemy number one.
Failing to get a coffee-cup reader, we were forced to put together a review of the year, taking on a truly Cypriot stance and looking back instead of ahead. Normal service resume next Sunday.
We wish you a happy, healthy, prosperous and sexually active, new year and urge you to follow Monty Python’s immortal advice: ‘Always look on the bright side of life’.
UNLESS something colossally ground-breaking happens today that forces us to re-appraise everything which happened in the previous 364 days, we could safely say that 2006 was as bad – if not worse – than the previous year, at least on the political and agricultural fronts.
I hate to be a messenger of doom and gloom on the last day of the year, when most customers are preparing to go out and party, high on hope and optimism (and some on illegal substances). This is a day to be as happy, generous-spirited and forgiving as our Ethnarch, so we will take a leaf out of his book, at least for a few paragraphs, and focus on the positive things that happened over the last 12 months.
In sport it was a fantastic year. Marcos Baghdatis became the first Cypriot to reach a Grand Slam final after some heroic performances at the Australian Open, where he lost the final to world number one Roger Federer. He also reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon while for most of the year he was among the top ten-ranked players in the world.
Under no other presidency have we enjoyed such phenomenal, international sporting success. In football, our national side not only thrashed Ireland 5-2, but also held mighty Germany to a 1-1 draw in the Euro 2008 qualifying match.
THE ECONOMY has been doing reasonably well, thanks to the construction boom, while public finances have never been in better shape. All credit for the latter goes to Finance Minister Michalis Sarris’ neo-liberal economic policies, which are all the more remarkable as they are being pursued by a communist-backed government.
Sarris is by far the best appointment made by the Ethnarch; the saving grace of the government and the odd-man-out in a cabinet made up of men with delusions of adequacy such as Sophocleous, Lillikas and Pefkios. He has proved an unmovable barrier against the lunatic economic proposals by the populist Commies as he prepares the economy for the adoption of the euro.
The banking world has also been turned upside down – no thanks to the government – with the chairmen of both big banks forced to resign. Takeover fever gripped the industry. Laiki, under the control of a Greek financier, is to merge with Marfin, while the B of C, was rumoured to be a takeover target for Greek banks, before it made an embarrassing, half-hearted bid to buy Greece’s Emboriki.
VERY LITTLE else changed in our backward-looking, cultural, desert island. As usual, we witnessed endless, public bickering over the distribution of the spoils of power by the alliance parties all of which were openly engaging in big-time rusfeti, while pontificating about the benefits of meritocracy.
In the one instance when the board of state-controlled Tass news agency practised meritocratic principles and appointed Christoforos Christoforou as general manager, our enlightened Ethnarch refused to allow the Council of Ministers to ratify the appointment for 11 months, leaving the man waiting to take up his job.
In November, the Council of Ministers put him out of his misery by announcing that it would not ratify the appointment, for some obscure procedural reason. The real reason was that Christoforos had publicly criticised the Ethnarch in the past and had refused to sign a repentance form.
THE REPUBLIC, like every other year, was the target of several conspiracies, all of which were bravely thwarted by our Ethnarch with a little help from his secret services chief Tasos Tzionis. As if having to deal with the monthly conspiracies by the British and the Americans, aimed at helping the Turks and bringing back the Satanic plan was not bad enough, this year we also had to contend with plot to overthrow the Ethnarch hatched in Greece.
The architect of this cowardly plot, reported simultaneously by two Athens papers, was allegedly, the octogenarian, former PM Constantine Mitsotakis, who is the father of the country’s Foreign Minister, Dora. Nobody, apart from the government, took this sad joke of a conspiracy seriously, which had ‘Conceived in Cyprus’ stamped all over it.
It will be remembered though, for the gloriously stupid statement it inspired from government spokesman Chris Pashiardis: “There is no evidence or proof that denies the plot,” he stated, thus inventing an ingenious catch-phrase for the conspiracy industry.
THERE was no evidence or proof to deny the other threats we had to face in 2006, uncovered by the media. These were targeted at the Greek Cypriot consumer and most emanated from the pseudo-state.
First we had to resist the mass invasion of the poisoned Turkish tomatoes which were being brought from Turkey, certified as Turkish Cypriot and sold to the National Guard by greedy Greek middlemen.
A month after we heroically saw off the threat of the poisoned tomatoes, our Agriculture Minister Photis Photiou single-handedly uncovered an Anglo-Turkish potato-smuggling ring, aimed at destabilising the potato economy. It later emerged that the potatoes were Greek Cypriot, being smuggled from south to north.
And in December, a little before Christmas, the media reported that Turkish turkeys had been smuggled south and were being sold at cheaper prices than Cypriot turkeys. It is said the gastroenteritis epidemic that affected thousands of people last week was from the consumption of poisoned Turkish turkeys and there is no proof or evidence to deny it.
ABROAD, our Ethnarch’s efforts to thwart Anglo-British plotting against our interests consistently ended in failure, although these failures were always re-packaged and sold as ‘successes against all odds’ to the domestic audience. This was the only thing new Foreign Minister Giorgos Lillikas (whose foreign policy consisted of giving undiplomatic moral sermons about principles to everyone in hearing range) did competently.
Officials who may have been sympathetic to our cause turned against us after hearing the insufferable, self-styled ‘bad-boy’ from Panayia, going on about “personally safeguarding the credibility of the EU” and advertising our alleged, “moral superiority”.
Despite his tireless moral rhetoric and open threats, the bad-boy failed to safeguard the credibility of the EU; the Turks were given a slap on the wrist for not opening their ports to Cyprus traffic and effectively allowed to keep them closed for another three years and to continue accession talks. Direct trade between the north and the EU, which we had been blocking for two years, will probably commence in 2007.
His failure could not have been more emphatic, but both he and the government expressed satisfacti
on “under the circumstances”.
WE MAY be unfair in putting all the blame for the EU fiasco on Lillikas, as the Ethnarch and the head of his diplomatic office, Tasos Tzionis, must also take some credit. The only tangible achievement of this trio of small-time players, let loose on the international stage to face the big boys, was to make Cyprus the most-hated member-state in Brussels. The mere mention of our country makes officials and diplomats go into hiding.
‘Cyprus fatigue’ has spread like an epidemic in Brussels, with politicians and officials fed up of constantly bickering about technicalities and minor details with the obsessive, one-issue, Cypriots, who know no other way to practise diplomacy.
These bad habits – about phraseology, abstract notions and the correct positioning of commas in a text – acquired after decades of dealing with excessively tolerant and indulgent UN officials, do not go down well in Brussels.
IN THE LAST year, we also managed to piss off the UN, which is no longer prepared to extend the tolerance of the past. Twice UN headquarters issued statements politely saying that our government was being economical with the truth.
First the UN Secretary-General’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric accused our government of misinforming the public about what had been discussed at the Ethnarch’s February meeting in Paris with Kofi Annan. Then in October UNDP, described the government claims about UNOPS funding as a “gross misrepresentation of the facts”.
We put all our efforts into safeguarding the credibility of the EU and completely neglected safeguarding our own.
WE DO NOT want to finish this year’s offering on a sour note and have left the single most positive development of the year till last. May 2006 will be remembered as the month when Nicholas Papadopoulos, Tassou, was triumphantly elected a DIKO deputy. And we are proud to say that our establishment made a small contribution towards his election by reminding its readers, every Sunday, to vote for him.
With palazzo man, Marios Karoyian installed as new DIKO chief, until Nicholas is mature enough to take over the party, all that remains to be planned is how the presidency would be passed on to the Ethnarch’s heir. Nicholas is not however in a big hurry. Asked recently if he saw himself in the palazzo de la presidente, he sensibly replied, “not for the time being”. But after his father’s second term, he will most certainly be ready.
QUOTES OF THE YEARS
“Every Cypriot hides inside himself a Baghdatis, who, at the critical time, comes to the surface…. Every one of us should unleash the Baghdatis inside him to act and help our country overcome its difficulties so it can achieve a settlement that will serve all Cypriots, and not the foreigners, led by the British.”
Vasos Georgiou, director of the House President’s office, serves a double-fault
“I will not accept the Americans and the British, who co-authored the Annan plan, to be protagonists (of a new initiative). They do not have the right. Whenever they tell me, ‘here is a proposal’, I will ask them, ‘what do the Russians say, what do the French say, and what do the Chinese say?’”
Ethnarch Tassos inaugurates his ‘ask the Chinese’ diplomatic initiative
“I went there. I didn’t know it was a military ship. I didn’t know they would give me a plaque. I passed from there to see what was going on and they gave me a plaque. It was my mistake anyway.”
Former Limassol Mayor, Demetris Kontides explaining how an AKEL communist ended up being honoured on a US warship docked in Limassol
“We should not take into account what an employee of the UN says.”
Nicholas Papadopoulos, the Ethnarch’s son and heir, declares the UN Secretary-General’s Spokesman Stephane Dujarric a liar.
“The only stable factor in Cyprus is the whores. They use to be Latin American, then were Thai, then were Filipina, then were Slavs; they used to be in the cabarets, then appeared in the pubs and Turkish hotels, but they remain there. What a perversion! Cyprus has 300,000 women starving for sperm, but Cypriot men prefer whores. They constitute the sexual preference of the Cypriot man. Unfortunately, his political preferences are the equivalent.”
Yiangos Mikellides, psychiatrist and columnist
“The threat of a veto is more effective than the exercise of the veto.”
Foreign Minister Giorgos Lillikas explains the formula for diplomatic success
“I can only assume that the sole serious reason is Turkey’s unquestionable and recognised expertise on issues of invasion, victimisation of refugees and ways of creating refugees.”
Government Spokesman Christodoulos Pashiardis offers a reason why Turkey was participating in the Rome conference for the Lebanon
“If we are so cheap that we can be bought with £50,000, we should all go home.”
Demetris Christofias, House President, indicates where the bidding should start
“We want to safeguard the credibility and principles of the European Union.”
Giorgos Lillikas, outlines his foreign policy goals
“He took part in armed, national liberation struggles so that we can all enjoy press freedom in this country.”
Nicholas Papadopoulos, praises his dad’s commitment to press freedom
“This is why I say with frustration and real contempt. Is this journalism? One reproduces what the other says and they invent conspiracies and party pressure.”
Ethnarch Tassos, expresses doubts about giving us said press freedoms
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