I JUST cannot understand why the bash-patriotic disciples of the deposed Ethnarch and defenders of our national dignity in DIKO and EDEK are giving comrade presidente such an easy ride on the Cyprob.
The comrade has done everything that their omniscient leader had refused to do because it would be nationally disastrous and they have still not gone on TV and radio to report his deficient patriotism to the people. Like most things in the Peoples’ Republic of Kyproulla it just doesn’t make any sense.
When Tassos refused to open Ledra Street over some ridiculous concern about the length of the buffer zone, the national resistance duet of Omirou and Karoyan was singing his praises; when he was harping on about the need to implement the July 8 agreement, the duet was repeating his tune day and night; when he refused Talat’s proposal to set a date for the start of negotiations, the apprentice windbags were hailing him as a super-hero.
Comrade presidente has done the exact opposite: he opened Ledra Street without sorting out the buffer zone question, accepted a watered down version of the July 8 agreement, discarding all the Tassos safeguards that ensured the committees would never have got anywhere if they were ever set up, and, worst of all, agreed to start settlement talks in three months’ time.
Now if Tassos was correct, as the national resistance duet kept telling us on a daily basis until two months ago, then the presidente’s decisions, which are a negation of the Ethnarch’s enlightened policies, must be wrong. So why is the duet not protesting, why is it not warning us about the impending disaster, why is it not exposing the presidente’s national treachery to the people?
Just think a few months back: F?hrer Nik only had to speak in favour of settlement negotiations, for Omirou, Karoyan and the rest of the bash-patriots to turn into wild animals baying for his blood. He was unanimously declared an agent of foreign interests and an enemy of the Republic guilty of high treason.
Christofias has not just spoken in favour of talks, he has put into practice everything Nik had been treacherously demanding, but the national resistance duo somehow failed to see this as a threat to our national interests. The presidente is paving the way for the virgin birth of the Two Peoples’ Republic of Kyproulla and the patriotic windbags are saying nothing.
HAVE Communist agents been spiking the coffee of the national resistance fighters with mind-altering drugs to screw up their perception of reality and make them forget their patriotic lines?
Perhaps their apathy was caused by the unexpected departure of the Ethnarch. True, they have lost their leader who used to tell them what to say in public, but surely they can call his political office and seek advice. The drug theory is the only plausible explanation for their volte face.
Because I cannot believe that comrade presidente has bought Marios’ support for the sell-out of the Repulic to the Turks by giving him the House presidency. Marios is just too patriotic to put his personal advancement above the interests of the country and too loyal to betray the proud legacy of the Ethnarch for a public post.
As for Yiannakis, there is no way he would sacrifice the national interest for the two crummy ministries given to his party, one of which is agriculture.
Whatever the reasons, our establishment is deeply disappointed that in our country’s hour of need two of its most fearlessly patriotic party leaders are behaving like spineless yes-men, toadying to a presidente hell-bent on bringing back the Satanic plan and sharing power with the Turks.
THEY COULD not even bring themselves to say a bad word about the leading role taken by our bad demons the Brits in the peace efforts, another radical departure from the Ethnarch’s policy.
Remember how our Tassos had announced that the Anglo-Americans would be prevented from calling the shots on the Cyprob and he would insist that the UN did nothing without having the approval of all permanent Security Council members? He had even coined a new phrase – “Did you ask the Chinese?”
Well nobody is asking the Chinese or the Russian anything and the Brits have been allowed by comrade presidente to run the show on their own. He is showing a hell of a lot of trust in the country he used to call our bad demon, whose support for a settlement must make every right-thinking Greek Cypriot – not just the journalists of Simerini – suspicious and wary.
The nationally dignified, rotten egg welcome we gave Jack Straw under the Ethnarch, seems to have been centuries ago.
THE ONLY patriotic stirrings we heard in the last week, despite the avalanche of provocations, related to the comment by UN Under-Secretary-General Lynn Pascoe, who had said that settlement talks would be based on past agreements, UN resolutions and peace plans. This was taken to mean, quite rightly, that the A-plan would be back on the negotiating table, sparking some restrained hysteria (even the hysteria is half-hearted in the PRK), which barely lasted a day. But the idea that the negotiations will not be based on the A-plan is one of those myths promoted by the presidente that you choose to believe if you have been made House president or your party has been given a couple of ministries.
APOLOGIES to our good friend Charilaos Stavrakis, whom we mistakenly referred to last week as the Foreign Minister. He is of course the Finance Minister, with serious ambitions of becoming a national saviour, as his lightning visit to the Ukraine last Monday indicated. I may be wrong but his mission to rescue the financial services sector did seem a little stage-managed.
A few days before the trip he had announced that there was a big danger of Ukraine following Russia’s example of putting the PRK on its tax black-list and that he would urgently fly to Kiev to prevent this potentially disastrous development. On his return, after meetings with the Ukrainian Finance Minister and his deputy, Charilaos announced that there was no way we would be on the black-list.
Not only had he seen off the danger, but he also arranged for a double-taxation treaty to be signed with the Ukraine in a few weeks’ time. All he needed was two meetings to save our financial sector from ruin, which was quite astonishing. As Charilaos explained, if we had been put on the black-list “the state would have lost many millions of euros in revenue and there may have been job losses”.
Note how he pointed out that he protected the revenue of the state and the jobs of the working people – he omitted to mention that he had also protected the profits of the private companies. You can only stake a claim as national saviour in the People’s Republic if you are safeguarding the revenue of the state – not of greedy banks, auditors and lawyers.
HAVING dealt with the Ukraine, we hope Charilaos will put on his ‘superman’ outfit again soon and fly to Moscow, because if he does not get us off Russia’s black-list, the state stands to lose hundreds of millions of euros in revenue. The volume of business from Russia is much greater than from Ukraine (which provides peanuts to the economy by comparison) and we are already on Russia’s black-list – it is a matter of prioritising. This is not intended to belittle Charilaos’ glorious Ukraine success, but how will he create the fairer society for which he yearns if the flow of Russian millions to state coffers is not secured?
MORE AND more people are beginning to feel the effects of the water cuts, with hundreds of households being left without a drop of H20 for days. All credit to our leading daily Phil, which managed to turn this into an excuse to gloat. On Friday the paper boasted that it had reported the “problems that were created by the water cuts from the start (two weeks ago), but back then nobody was moved.”
What a cheap shot. This is the paper that was not moved to write a single word of criticism about the previous government’s criminally negligent refusal to do anything about the water shortage because it did not want to jeopardise the Ethnarch’s re-election prospects. And even after he was voted out, the paper has remained so loyal it has avoided even hinting that households are without water because of the colossal incompetence of the Ethnarch’s government.
THE WATER CUTS have had their positive side as well. I am informed that the Foreign Ministry, that den of Tassos supporters, was recently left without water, staff not even able to go to the toilet – it was a nice way to reminisce about the glory days of their hero. One staff member asked why buckets of water had not been provided for the toilets and was told that the cleaning staff had no obligation to bring in buckets for the toilets. Only the permanent secretary was entitled to have a bucket of water in his toilet, the employee was told. Hygiene standards for the rest of the staff are obviously not so important.
SPEAKING of the Foreign Ministry, I am informed the sinecure given to the Ethnarch’s symbetheros Kokos Eliades was extended by another five years. He will continue to do very little as a Foreign Ministry communications advisor, a job that allows him to have a television in his office so he can monitor all the diplomatic developments in day-time variety shows and soap-operas.
‘GOLGOTHA of expensiveness for meat”, read a Phil headline on Thursday, giving an Easter flavour to its story about the number of lambs that will be slaughtered for the Easter holidays. The writer may have thought this was a rather witty headline, but for us church-goers it was rather offensive, as it equated Christ’s suffering on Golgotha to Cypriots paying a couple of euros extra per kilo of lamb.
But the good news is that the paper’s campaigning against the importation of Bulgarian and Romanian lamb last year has yielded results – none will be imported this year. If only it campaigned as passionately about the water crisis last year, it would have spared our diplomats the indignity of not being able to go to the toilet.
ELECTRICITY Authority unions have been protesting about the way their pension fund was being managed, accusing the fund’s management of not investing the money sensibly. The row brought to the surface a scandal that nobody seems remotely interested in. The fund has a deficit of about €20 million every year and will continue to do so for the next 10 to 15 years at least. The annual deficit is covered every year by the mug known as the taxpayer, so that retired EAC employees can receive pensions that are 10 times higher than what ordinary pensioners receive.
It gets worse – £250 million in the pension fund belongs to the Authority and was not collected from staff contributions. In other words, the EAC employees are entitled to princely pensions for which they have contributed nothing. The workers’ republic was established long before comrade Christofias came to power.
SOVIET state practices also preceded the comrade’s election. Last Monday, Politis reported how the Land Surveys Department had been stealing money off people by charging transfer fees on property prices that included VAT. Instead of calculating the transfer fees on the selling price before VAT had been added, Department staff would take a percentage of the price that included VAT.
This is theft by the state, but a Land Surveys Department official who was asked by the paper if the money would be returned, said that first he would check if the seller had paid the VAT he collected to the government! This was a perfect illustration of public servants’ Soviet mentality, as it ignored who had been ripped off. It was the buyer who had been ripped off by being overcharged by the state service.
Would he be punished by not getting his money back from the state because the seller might not have paid the VAT he collected? Soviet justice is alive and well in the PRK.
THIS week’s water-saving tip is rather ambitious, but it can be pulled off given the Soviet tendencies of our state. A law should be passed preventing people from drinking more than half a litre of water per day. How would it be implemented? Cops will stop people and using a special kit, breathalyse them for water – those found with more than half a litre of water inside them would be fined €1,000. The hefty fine would be an effective deterrent. The water saved could be used to water the grass of the GSP stadium. According to a Water Board chief, drinking water is used for the GSP grass, because the water from nearby bore-holes is not good enough.
THERE is no paper next Sunday because of Easter and therefore no Coffeeshop. We hope that all our meat-eating, Greek Orthodox customers will be able to climb the “Golgotha of expensiveness” and will not have to take out a bank loan in order to buy lamb for the their Easter lunch.
