THE DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat has been spreading its roots in the People’s Republic of Kyproulla. Union bosses are becoming more arrogant than ever before – and this takes some doing – as they are guaranteed our people-friendly government’s unwavering support even when they resort to gangster-type tactics, like the bank employees union ETYK did last week.
The measures taken by ETYK against the National Bank of Greece (NBG) because it had the audacity to sack two of its employees without consulting it, had more in common with protection rackets than trade unionism.
Just like last year, when there was another acrimonious dispute at the bank, ETYK has ordered its members at the other banks not to process any transactions involving the NBG, a move that has again paralysed the bank.
It is also staging a three-hour work stoppage on Monday – the only day the banks work in the afternoon – to protest the sackings. Employees of the bank where the dispute occurred will not be on strike on Monday. Two thirds of NBG staff quit ETYK and set up their own union after last year’s crippling strike brought the bank to the brink of closure.
The sackings were in violation of the industrial relations codes, trumpeted the sanctimonious union. But then again so is the calling of a strike at the other banks – not to mention the instructions not to process NBG transactions.
The Labour Ministry’s offer to mediate illustrates the government bias – it took for granted that the bank management had no right to decide who should work for the company and that the union’s bullying tactics were perfectly legitimate. In the People’s Republic, the workers are always right.
THIS DISPUTE is different from the others because it is the first time ETYK’s megalomaniac boss Loizos Hadjicostis has taken a back seat. He is still calling the shots, but he has left his flunkeys to do the public talking as for once he has decided to maintain a low profile.
His flunkeys have been as thuggish as their leader in their public exchanges, openly intimidating and shovelling abuse at representatives of the rival NBG union.
One of them revealed his fascistic mentality when he protested to a CyBC presenter for giving the right of speech to a representative of the rival union. To her credit, the presenter told him to get off the show if he did not want a dialogue.
He stayed on the show and engaged in a monologue of abusive comments.
IN ANOTHER first for an industrial dispute, ETYK had said it would report NBG management to the police for blackmailing staff. The union alleged that staff were being urged to leave ETYK if they did not want to miss out on promotion. It also accused the bank of not promoting ETYK members and of giving them unfavourable transfers.
We do not know if this is true, but if it were, could you blame any company for penalising workers who had sided with a union that had brought the company to the brink of closure? Of course it should penalise employees who backed the gangster-type behaviour of their megalomaniac union boss, who ordered IT workers to steal access codes to the bank’s computer systems and left it without business for a whole month, because his ego had been hurt and his personal power challenged.
Are they joking when they say workers who backed this thuggish behaviour should not miss out on promotion? They should be grateful they still have a job.
ANOTHER pointer of the onset of the dictatorship of the proles was the arrogant letter sent to Politis by PEO boss Bambis Kyritsis, after a columnist of the paper had exposed his ignorance on the how stock exchange operated and described him as ‘clueless’. Kyritsis expressed his sorrow, as he believed a columnist “is obliged to control his freedom”.
It was one thing to use your freedom to express yourself, and quite “another to use your freedom to abuse, defame and insult”, the morally superior union boss said. His thinking reminds me of the famous quote, by Kyristis’ hero, Lenin. “It is true that liberty is precious – so precious that it must be rationed.”
With the comrades on a roll, constantly reminding us how capitalism had failed, it appears only a matter of time before the liberty rationing begins.
A FEW months ago, our establishment asked whether there was any connection between the Phil group and Offsite, the daily web newsletter.
One of the owners of Offsite also owns Gnora PR firm and we wondered whether he had landed a contract to do some consultancy work for Phil, given the badly disguised promotional plugs for Phil and its owner that he features from time to time.
Another theory, for which there is no hard evidence, is that Phil has become a partner in the business, using it as vehicle to promote itself to unsuspecting recipients of the newsletter.
On October 10, the newsletter’s top item made reference to an article in Phil, where the interior minister had said that Phil’s own reactionary director (and weekly columnist), Takis Kounnafis, wanted “to convey his xenophobic feelings to public opinion.”
Kounnafis would respond in his Sunday column, we were authoritatively informed by Offsite – as if anyone wanted to know.
The following Monday we had the follow-up on Offsite, informing its anxious readers about Kounnafis’ response, which was too pathetic to repeat here. But this was not the end of this important issue for Offsite, which, on Tuesday, using a separate row between a union boss and a Politis columnist, seized the opportunity to remind us that the Interior Minister had “indirectly accused” the Phil director of being “a racist”.
Incidentally, why did the newsletter not inform us when the Politis columnist would publish a response to the union boss? Is it because the paper is not a client of Gnora?
PR SUSPICIONS were roused by another item featured in last week’s Offsite. A grovelling report about the turtle-loving Giorgos Perdikis’ contribution to the work of the legislature, objectively, informed us that the one-man-party, until the summer recess, had submitted 8.7 per cent of the bill proposals discussed by the House and that two of the six bill proposals he submitted in 2006 became laws.
He also tabled 58 of the 554 questions tabled in the House, which represented 10.66 per cent. Until now I had thought that stats were used to evaluate the performance of basketball players (two-pointers, three-pointers, assists, free throw conversions etc) but for members of parliament it seems a bit idiotic.
Should we consider a deputy who tabled 100 stupid questions a good parliamentarian because this represented 18 per cent of the total number of questions?
The Perdikis Party used the services of Gnora in the last parliamentary elections, but we do not know if it remains a client of the company.
LAST WEEK’S Shop had reported that Andis Hadjicostis had won the heated debate he had had with Ozdil Nami at a dinner party at British High Commissioner’s residence.
We have since received information from another guest (who being a Turkish Cypriot may have been a bit biased) that the row had not ended in a clear-cut victory for Andis. He assured us that Nami had won on points.
As we do not want to jeopardise our reputation for fairness we shall declare the outcome a draw and hope Andis forgives us.
THE KYPROULLAN version of Greece’s Kathimerini newspaper will be on the stands for the first time on November 2, which happens to be the Cyprus Mail’s 63rd birthday. Kathimerini big-wigs were on the paradise island last week to brief big advertisers about the new paper which would be printed in Greece and flown here by charter plane in the early hours of Sunday.
The paper’s target circulation is 10,000 and it plans to take these readers from the organ of the publisher, who is a tiger according to the Chinese horoscope.
I wish them every success, but I suspect they have seriously under-estimated the conservatism and provincialism of their main competitor’s core readership. And then the tiger is certain to bite back as well.
HE TRIED to out-do his main competitor Politis yesterday with a rather pitiful story on his front page. On Friday Politis led with the story of a Syrian man who had sold his kidney to a man in Limassol, with the doctor who carried out the transplant confirming the story, and admitting that he had been deceived by the two, as they had posed as friends.
Yesterday, Phil tried to go one better than its competitor led with a story about obstetricians selling the babies of Bulgarian women to childless couples. It would have been a great story had there been a shred of evidence to make it believable, but it showed the lengths the tenacious tiger is willing to go to when he feels the competition is gaining the upper hand.
EQUALITY before the law has never really taken root, despite our commitment to respect for human rights and other democratic ideals.
A big-shot Nicosia lawyer, a few months ago, was reported to the authorities for verbally abusing a less illustrious colleague and the police, to their credit, investigated the case and sent it to the Attorney-general’s office to bring criminal charges.
But AG Petros Clerides, who seems to be in awe of the big-shot, establishment lawyers, entered a nolle prosequi, which in plain language meant he would proceed no further. He gave no reason for his decision.
If pressed, he would no doubt come up with the predictable excuse that it was not in the public interest to prosecute. And he would be correct. What sort of society would we be creating when a bona fide member of the Nicosia aristocracy and scion of a legal dynasty is taken to court whenever he talks a bit rudely to a social inferior?
We are with Petros on this one, as equality before the law is a load of populist nonsense anyway.
PEOPLE who still have an interest in the Cyprob, will enjoy attending this coming Friday’s panel discussion debate at the University of Nicosia, titled ‘Mass Media and the Cyprus Problem’, which would presumably focus on the role of hacks in preventing a settlement.
On the panel will be our two sharpest politicians – the two Niks – Anastassiades (aka Fuhrer) and Katsourides and two hacks from opposing camps. Pro-settlement Makarios Droushiotis, who made a documentary about the witch-hunt by hacks and politicians against yes-voters, and Lazaros Mavros who has been opposed to a compromise with the Turks since before he could speak.
The other two panellists will be Andis Hadjicostis the boss of über-patriot Dias Group and Christoforos Christoforou, the man whose appointment as Tass news agency boss was personally blocked by our Ethnarch.
Erini Charalambidou, the CyBC’s new political chat show star, would be chairing the discussion which starts at 6.30pm.
Suggestions that the CyBC might broadcast the discussion drew a terse, written denial by the corporation, which obviously did not want to be associated with an event at which anti-Ethnarchic views might be heard.
INTEGRATING Transport in a Reunified Cyprus was the title of conference held in Nicosia earlier this week, with speakers from both sides of the dividing line as well as from abroad.
Nicos Mesaritis, the head of the Reconstruction and Resettlement Council, which organised the conference, must have thought he was being witty when he introduced a Turkish civil and transport engineer Mehmet Kunt, with the following remark: “I will avoid pronouncing his surname, in case I say it wrong.”
Surely there was only one correct pronunciation for the name.
A WORD of sympathy for our unlikeable cabaret owners, whom our socialist government is determined to drive out of business. This would be achieved by the newly prepared rules which stipulate that cabarets can only employ dancing groups of at least five members and that dancers would have to provide certificates proving that they were qualified dancers.
What is the objective of this law? Do they want cabaret owners to hire members of the Bolshoi Ballet company to raise the cultural standards of cabaret-goers?
Someone should inform the Interior Minister that dance aesthetics are of no interest to the average cabaret-goer, and his commendable effort to introduce art to strip joints is unlikely to be appreciated.
The cabaret issue will be explored extensively next week.
BEFORE we close we would like to remind readers that, according to Offsite, the Interior Minister has “indirectly accused” the director of Phileleftheros of being a “racist”.
