Tales from the coffeeshop
THOSE of us who thought that we would stop living in the sixties after the Ethnarch’s departure from the palazzo have been proved wrong. Thanks to our comrade presidente we have returned there, to the era when the Cyprus head of state would visit the UN and, according to the official media, always win over the world’s leaders with his intelligence and charisma.We are back in the period when Archbishop Makarios drew the attention of the world as soon as he took the podium at the UN General Assembly and talked about the injustice done to our country. Not since that golden age of Makarios had any of our presidentes enjoyed such a mega-successful week at the UN; not even Spy.
The humble boy from Dikomo showed what he was made of, not only scoring diplomatic triumphs and moral victories during his contacts, but also putting the jumped-up Turkish president Abdullah Gul in his place, with his powerful speech to the General Assembly, by the end of which many of the ambassadors were still awake.
The shifty Gul also got a personal talking to by the comrade when they bumped into each other in the UN building (or as the official media said, “met on the sidelines of the General Assembly”, because it sounds better). He was told to cut out the platitudes and take some action that would help the two sides arrive at an agreement, RIK informed us yesterday morning, in a slightly more formal style.
We now await the release of the RIK documentary about the presidente conquering the UN on DVD. It would sit well alongside that other RIK classic of the political documentary genre, Makarios at the Kremlin, which was never officially released, but can be obtained on low-quality, video-tape on the black market.
THE SIGNS were good from the word go. Last weekend, when our presidente met the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon he announced, immediately afterwards, that not only did they strike a personal rapport, but there was also ‘chemistry’.
“I had a very cordial conversation with the Secretary-General. It appears there is chemistry and this makes me happy,” he announced.
The message was clear – charmer Christofias had won over the poker-faced Ban in 30 minutes – even though the phrase used to emphasise the point was a bit unfortunate. The word ‘chemistry’ is often used by new lovers to describe their sexual compatibility, but in diplomacy it just sounds stupid, even if two statesmen spent their meeting holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, which certainly did not happen at the Ban-Christofias meeting.
AFTER securing a chemical reaction from Ban, he had a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov (meetings with Russian officials was also a Makarios tactic), who, reportedly, repeated for the zillionth time Moscow’s support for a settlement, based on UN Security Council resolutions. Sadly, there was no chemistry.
The most difficult part of his mission was to respond to all the outrageous views expressed by Gul during his address of the Gen. Ass. Our man addressed the Gen. Ass., the following day, and according to Haravghi, his “honest speech,” not only “convinced” but it also “made an impression”. This was because “the president’s speech was sincere and honourable.”
Another journalist wrote didactically in the paper on Friday: “The Cypriot people must feel proud and, at the same time, re-assured because at this critical time we have at the helm of the state a political leader like Demetris Christofias.”
TASS News Agency also reported that the new Makarios, had a “short encounter with US President George Bush, during a reception which the US president hosted for the heads on national delegations”. This sounds better than reporting that Bush shook Christofias’ hand as he entered the reception room.
The Tass correspondent, quoting diplomatic sources said the president also “had the opportunity to have a brief encounter with Condoleezza Rice”, presumably as they both reached for canape from the same tray. There was no chemistry and no intention by the correspondent to conjure images of doomed romance, by his reference to a “brief encounter”.
The question, diplomats everywhere were asking was which lasted the longest – the brief or the short encounter?
HAVING won over Ban, the Gen Ass, Bush and Condi, the UN reps of the five permanent members of Security Council were a piece of cake for the presidente, bursting with the confidence of a villager welcomed into the salons of the upper classes. He instructed them to take a “collective approach” to the Cyprob and urged them to avoid the mistakes of 2004.
And he convinced them, although there was no chemistry. As Michalis Ignatiou, authoritatively reported from New York, “the filibustering by Ankara and the realisation of the inability of the occupation leader, Talat to negotiate a deal is worrying foreigners who are interested in the Cyprus problem.”
Obviously, the many foreigners who had told Ignatiou they were worried, had been enlightened about the situation by the chemical statesman.
THE HOUSE of the late Dr Ihsan Ali in Paphos was demolished last weekend despite the frenzied efforts of Yiorkos Perdikis to have it declared a “historical monument”. He even bullied the naive interior minister into trying to have it listed, despite the lack of any aesthetic or architectural justification.
His ludicrous cause was also supported by another nationalist hard-liner Yiannakis Omirou, who seized the opportunity to show that he was capable of respecting a Turkish Cypriot. The campaign against the demolition was stirred by the late doctor’s daughter, who had sold the house to an insurance company, six years ago, for about 300 thousand pounds.
The buyer agreed that for as long as Ihsan Ali’s widow was alive she would use the house. She passed away two years ago, so the buyer decided to demolish it. In the meantime, prices in Kato Paphos had soared and Ihsan Ali’s daughter, realising she could make a lot more money, tried to buy it back. She offered to buy it back for 320 grand, but the new owner told her it was not for sale.
She undertook the campaign for preventing its demolition in the hope that she could somehow reclaim its ownership, as she, like the rest of us, would have gained nothing from the house being declared a historical monument.
MAYOR of Paphos Savvas Vergas told a radio show that was discussing the demolition of the house on Monday morning that he did not know why the owners had sent in the bulldozers, giving the impression that they had acted illegally. Only later in the day, did he remember that Paphos Municipal Council had written to the owners in June, urging them to go ahead with the demolition of the house as it had become infested with snakes and rats. He must have forgotten that he was chairing the meeting that had unanimously approved the demolition request.
WHEN it comes to planning, our authorities are unlikely to win any international prizes. Even on road-building and road improvements which they have been undertaking for decades they are incapable of doing some basic planning. I will not even mention the turning of central Nicosia into a massive building site.
The queues for entering Nicosia from the motorway are a few kilometers long every morning, because the planners decided to do work on the lane/hard-shoulder that drivers took in order to do a right at the Kalisperas traffic lights, into Athalassa Avenue. Now there are only two lanes and there are record tailbacks.
The question is why was the work not done in July and August, when the traffic coming into Nicosia is much lighter and congestion would have been manageable?
How smart was it to start work in September when the traffic is at peak levels?
WE ARE happy to see that Ethnarch junior is gradually easing his way back into the political scene after his dad’s shock defeat in February. First he had a go at comrade presidente for agreeing to Turkish settlers staying on after a settlement. On Thursday, when the House Legal Affairs committee was discussing the bill for fighting terrorism he made a more constructive suggestion. He felt that the EU register of organisations and individuals considered to be terrorists – that should be included in the Cyprus law – had omitted one terrorist organisation, the Turkish occupation army. Presumably, if junior’s suggestion was adopted and the occupation army was included in the law would our police co-operate with pseudo police to arrest all 40,000 Turkish terrorists?
THE ALLEGATIONS about the unholy practices of Vatopedi monastery chief executive officer Father Ephrem mounted this week.
Apart from news that he was trying to evict a Paphos businessman from his shop, two years before the end of his contract, so that the monastery could build an apartment block, there were also reports that he was trying to reclaim 50,000 donums of land in Romania.
The most damning allegations were included in a 13-page letter by Mount Athos monks, sent to the parliament of Greece, in which they accused Ephrem and his Cypriot flunkies of kicking elderly monks out of their cells and stealing their possessions and property.
One monk spoke about the “trick miracles, thought up by the crafty Ephrem in order to mislead the faithful”. Interestingly, a couple of these money-generating “trick miracles” may have taken place in Kyproulla last November when a holy relic was brought by Ephrem to a church in Lakatamia.
Newspapers reported, that a woman who visited the church on crutches, after breaking her leg in a car crash, had left without them, completely cured. Nobody had seen the woman apart from the Church’s priest, and all he knew about her was that she was called Kyria Panayiota. A second miracle had also taken place at the same time. Father Ephrem told the media that a 16-year-old boy suffering from a serious illness had been completely cured. Nobody ever saw the boy.
But the ‘miracles’ were big cash generators. Thousands of people flocked to the Lakatamia Church to worship Ephrem’s holy relic, after hearing about the miracles. Each left a few quid to the church, which no doubt was transferred to the Vatopedi deposit account, after the Lakatamia church took a small cut.
FIRST an apology for getting the date of the christening of the daughter of Phil and Cyprus Weekly owner Nicos Pattichis wrong. The ceremony was held on Saturday, 20th September and not yesterday as we had reported last week. The rest of our information was correct.
Archbishop Chrys conducted the ceremony, which was attended by the wealthiest members of our society and was described by one of the guests as a “Hollywood christening”. The flaunting of the parents’ wealth, as expected, took epic proportions, and there were two ultra-lavish parties – one at lunch at the Power House and one in the evening at chez Pattichis.
Guest were handed a luxuriously-produced booklet – on silk-type paper with gold writing – in which there was a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo about numbers, colours and Hindu lore. The most interesting page was devoted to the Nicos and his Missus. This is what Pattichis wrote bout himself:
“Nicos, a tiger according to the Chinese horoscope, is probably the only zodiac sign that is not impressed easily by power and wealth. The tiger is dynamic, clever, charming, enthusiastic, original…. As a professional, she is competitive, effective, and learns quickly.”
The other quality of the tiger he forgot to mention is its colossal sense of self-importance.
His missus is a snake according to the Chinese horoscope, which means that she “is sophisticated, refined, noble, observant and assured”.
We can only assume that this bit of unrefined, self-advertising, on the pretext of their daughter’s christening, was the tiger’s idea.
