OUR DISREPUTABLE establishment had been in a quandary since Friday. How should it have treated the passing of our Ethnarch, given that it was never a great fan of the man?
Should it have ignored his death, mentioning nothing, even though it was the biggest news story of the week? That would have been a cop-out and we would have been letting our loyal customers down.
Should we have adopted the Latin dictum, ‘de mortuis nil nisi bonum’, heaping lavish praise on him, which would make us look embarrassingly hypocritical? Regulars would have thought we were taking the piss, which would have been grossly disrespectful.
The biggest temptation was to write something about the tributes by the television and radio stations, the intellectually challenged journalists of which displayed their trademark lack of measure and love of hyperbole, but that would have been in poor taste, even by our own low standards.
Although we had to struggle, we still could not resist the temptation of mentioning the performance of CyBC presenter Paris Potamitis, who struggled to read the news on Friday at 6pm. Constantly pausing, his voice quivering, you thought, that at any moment he was about to break down and start sobbing on air.
If he was so badly shaken by Papadopoulos’ passing, he should not have been allowed in the studio. If, however, he was alright and doing the distraught act just for added effect, then he deserves a nomination for best actor Oscar.
We will leave it at that – may Tassos rest in peace.
MANY BOOKS have been written trying to answer the intriguing question, ‘how does the criminal mind work?’ If this question was directed at double murderer and rapist Antonis Kitas, aka Al Capone, who escaped from the Apollonion Hospital in the early hours of Friday, the book would have been pretty small.
Capone proved that sometimes the criminal mind simply does not work. The guy had been staying at the Apollonion Hospital for the last six months, enjoying luxuries he would not even have dreamed of at the Central Prison – his Chinese wife regularly stayed the night – and he escaped.
And when you consider that he could have been eligible for parole in the not too distant future you realise that his criminal mind was in rather poor shape. Why risk losing the easy life in the hospital and the chance of being released in a couple of years, when there was a good chance he would be found?
The rumours are that Capone had gone out on a job and would have returned to his hospital room afterwards, but suffered the misfortune of bumping into a police patrol car in central Nicosia, where a shoot-out took place. If he were escaping he would not have gone via Stassicratous Street, unless he wanted to check out the bags in the Louis Vuitton shop window.
THE INCIDENT was just another classic Kyproulla cock-up. Capone was in a hospital room under 24-hour cop guard, but he could always open the window of his room and jump out. So why was the taxpayer’s money being wasted if he could so easily make his escape?
Apparently, the chief warden of the prison had identified this small weakness in security and asked the hospital to place iron bars outside the window. The Apollonion administrator asked for the request to be put in writing, but never received the letter so the bars were never placed in the window.
It’s just as well people living in the Apollonion area did not know about the security arrangements at the hospital because their sleep may have been affected by the knowledge that a psychopath doing time for murder and rape could take a stroll in their neighbourhood whenever he wished.
AL CAPONE had been at the hospital for six months, supposedly, awaiting permission to go abroad for an operation. He must have quite a bit of money stashed away to have been paying the €250 a night charged by the Apollonion.
His bill, for six months, would be in the region of €45,000 excluding doctors’ bills and medical tests. This is a lot of money for someone without a steady job. Even if he was jumping out the window regularly he would still need to earn €7,500 a month from his night-time job just to pay his monthly hospital bill.
Did the cops not wonder where he was getting the money from? Why would they? These are the guys who put a guard outside his hospital room and ignored the fact that he could get out through his window.
A book on how a policeman’s mind works could provide some answers.
THE OBLIGATORY resignation farce had to follow the Capone escape. Justice minister Cyprus Chrysostomides, who is in charge of the cops and the prisons, put his resignation at the disposal of his comrade presidente, but as has become accepted ministerial practice, he did not leave his post.
After all, there was a 99.99 per cent chance that the presidente would not accept it so what would be the point of packing his things and going home. Needless to say that comrade Tofias did not accept the resignation and Cyprus was forced to stay at the ministry against his wishes because he did not want to let down his boss at this critical phase in the Cyprus problem.
After all, the escape of a convicted murderer and rapist because of pathetically amateurish security was not a serious matter, our omniscient presidente declared on his arrival at Larnaca Airport on Friday night. Asked by hacks what he thought about the escape, the comrade refused to answer, saying “we have much more serious things to think about.” Serious things like Cyprus’ resignation, I suspect.
THE ANORTHOSIS fairy-tale came to an end on Tuesday despite the attempts by a generous Larnaca benefactor to restore calm in the ranks after the board-room squabbling which led to the arrest of chairman Andreas Panteli.
The Sunday before the do-or-die match against Panathinaikos, Simerini reported that “the leading businessman and personality of Larnaca, Antonis Fanieros” had offered to cover any deficits that auditors found in club’s accounts.
“I am not doing it for Andreas Panteli, but for Anorthosis, the team that fought and made us proud,” Fanieros was quoted as saying. Unfortunately, Fanieros’ generous offer did not have the desired effect on the players.
NONE of the previous three foreign ministers, who were in charge of the European Institute of Cyprus, were aware that it was operating unlawfully, it transpired at a House committee meeting earlier this week.
Even though all three (Iacovou, Lillikas, Markoulli) had been the ex officio President of the Board of Regents, nobody informed them that the Institute’s acting director was taking decisions without ever receiving authorisation from the Board. None of them thought it strange that the Institute was spending millions of pounds without the Board that they were chairing ever meeting to authorise the budget etc.
According to the EIC’s website, there is currently no Board of Regents. If you click on ‘Administration’, it brings a page titled ‘Board of Regents’ and there is not a single name on it. Does this make the EIC a pseudo-Institute?
I SUSPECT that the acting director of the EIC was given the freedom to do as he pleased – give himself huge pay rises etc – because he had proved to the previous government that he was a rabid opponent of the Annan plan during one conference launching an all-out attack on European officials.
It is nice to know that some people benefited socially and financially from opposing the satanic plan, because it was getting boring hearing people attributing their political woes to their opposition of the plan. These include several deputies, the former Central Bank Governor and of course Father Ephrem, who had to face a host of allegations about his management of his monastery because he and his brother Nicos Koutsou had patriotically opposed the plan.
FATHER Ephrem must be grateful to the mob of hooded hooligans who rioted in central Athens for three days as they removed Vatopedi monastery from the news. Watching the TV coverage and hearing the explanations given by the Greek TV presenters about the looting and destruction, made you realise that low intelligence is not a pre-requisite for a TV job only in Cyprus.
They were going out of their way to excuse the looting and arson, blaming it on state corruption, the police and the justice system. The only people who were not to blame were the hooded thugs smashing windows, setting fire to properties and looting. They had been provoked and therefore were blameless.
But by far the best explanation was given by the Stalinist leader of Greece’s Communist Party, Aleka Papariga, who said: “The hard core of the hooded individuals came from the ranks of state power and is being used to discredit the worker’s movement.”
CYPRUS TV and radio stations had to find a Cypriot angle to the riots. While Athens was burning they featured Cypriot holidaymakers telling us that they could not get to their hotel in central Athens at night. One told us that she had called her friends to pick her up, but they could not…
Another complained that he had to move to a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and wondered who would pay for it? This was an excuse to ask for the views of a representative of the travel agents, who informed us that all additional costs incurred by the rioting would be reimbursed.
You half expected some Cypriot to complain that the rioters had ruined her shopping plans.
SPEAKING of shopping, I do not know whether the small shopkeepers will go ahead with their plans to demonstrate outside stores that were illegally advertising price discounts. According to our monumentally idiotic law, shops can only advertise their sales in periods decided by the commerce ministry.
Do the small shopkeepers not realise that by demonstrating outside stores that were breaking the law, they would be drawing attention to the price cuts? Shoppers who did not see or hear the sales adverts, would go to the shops outside which there would be demonstrators.
IT HAPPENED at Lykavitos police station one morning a couple of weeks ago. A man went to pay a speeding fine and as he was waiting for the elderly cop in charge to process the fine, the computer screen froze and the receipt could not be printed.
The man was told to wait for a few minutes, for the computer to start working again, but after 15 minutes he got impatient and informed the cop that he did not have all day to wait.
The cop explained that there was only one line connecting all police stations to the program for fines and if another station was using it they had to wait. He called the central service to check what was wrong with the system but was told that someone else was using the program.
“I am sorry, you have to wait, because we cannot do anything about it” he said, but the man was having none of it. “You must be joking,” he said. “I will come back later when your computer is working,” he proposed.
“But you have to give me the money now,” the cop explained as he had already entered the amount into the computer system and he would have a deficit in his till, if he did not collect the cash for the fine.
“Forget it, I will give you the cash when I come to collect my receipt,” said the irritated man to which the cop responded, by saying “You are not going anywhere. You are staying here until the system is up again and I can issue you your receipt.”
This was when the man lost his rag and started to shout. “What if your system does not work again until this afternoon, am I to sit here and wait until then?”
“Yes,” snapped the cop. The man started shouting about the pathetic computer system, walked out of the office and walked to the front desk where he told the officer in charge, “If you want me to keep me here you will have to arrest me because I am leaving.” Then he walked out to his car, by which time the station chief had been alerted and went to the car-park to meet him.
The station chief apologised for the old boy’s behaviour and told the man that they would phone him when the system would be up again to come in and pay. He was called the next day, and when he went in asked when the computer for the fines unfroze. “Late evening yesterday,” was the reply.
And the moral of this story is that if the computer at the police station freezes while you are paying your speeding fine, go home.
