WE WOULD like to convey to all our regulars, rather belatedly, our best wishes for a happy, productive, exciting, intellectually stimulating, sexually active year full of love and joy. You may have noticed that we diplomatically omitted the stock adjective ‘prosperous’ in case some readers thought we were having a laugh at their expense.
This may slightly annoy our good friend, Finance Minister Charilaos, the only person in Kyproulla who is optimistic about our economic prospects in 2009, but then again our analysis is based on gut feeling which is much more reliable than the economic data prepared by clueless, nerdy, pen-pushers at the finance ministry.
On Friday, while underlining his optimism, Charilaos revised downwards his growth forecasts for this year for the second time in a couple of months and also revealed that the fiscal surplus he had predicted would actually be a deficit. Don’t be surprised if by March he announces that the ’09 growth rate would be negative – but not as bad as other eurozone countries.
At least our socially sensitive government’s noble objective for the establishment of a fairer society will be closer to realisation as businessmen will all be poorer by the end of the year, and the gap between the rich and state-assisted poor drastically cut.
No sane man could look forward to a prosperous year, but the insane among us can always look forward to another critical year for the Cyprob, the 35th in succession. The Cyprob, fortunately, is never affected by exogenous factors and is guaranteed to go through several critical and dangerous phases this year offering our sadly impoverished lives some much-needed excitement and fun.
THE YEAR began very well for our much-maligned police force, which ensured a happy ending to the Al Capone saga, arresting the convict in an untypically professional and tidy manner. No shots were fired, no cars crashed and no escape route had been left for Al.
This could probably be attributed to the grass he had smoked while resting in his cousin’s house in Paralimni. The cops had found a bag of grass by his side when they caught him in bed last Monday. He was obviously too stoned to try to escape or to pick up his gun and start shooting, which contributed to the success of the operation.
He was probably still stoned when he met the state pathologist at police HQ a few hours after his arrest. Despite carrying two bullet wounds that had not been treated for three and half weeks and being on the run the previous few days, Al was, psychologically, in very good shape, the doctor said. If he wasn’t high on the whacky tabbacky, Al must be a bit of superman.
Commenting on his arrest, the RIK reporter said nothing about the dope. “The mistake was made by the foreign (sic) wife of Kita’s cousin,” she announced, blaming the hapless woman for going to the chemist to buy bandages for Al and being spotted by the cops.
THE HACK who made the biggest impression during Monday night’s TV coverage of the Capone arrest was RIK’s Andreas Iosif who was at the police HQ monitoring who was coming and going. He was standing in front of the camera giving his final round-up of events at 5pm, as he said. He was wearing a heavy coat and had woollen scarf wrapped round his neck; we could not see if he was wearing gloves as well.
It made you think that the police HQ had been moved to Alaska, because the temperature in Kyproulla at 5pm last Monday was 16 degrees. Iosif probably wears a jumper in July.
DEPUTY Attorney-general Akis Papasavvas, in his position thanks to presidential rusfeti, rushed to the Nicosia Central Prisons on Thursday as soon as Al Capone demanded to see him. And once there, he was informed about the convict’s condition for speaking.
He had to be given assurances that his family would be offered protection by the authorities before he gave a statement. Difficult as this may seem to believe, in our crazy country even convicted double murderers have a right to make demands of the authorities. The nerve of the guy deserves a medal, but what do we expect when the deputy Attorney-general rushes to see him as soon as he demands an audience?
Meanwhile, new Justice Minister Loucas Louca took on the role of police spokesman after the arrest, but I will refrain from saying anything unflattering about the man because we hail from the same ugly village.
NOBODY knows what village House President and DIKO MP Marios Garoyian is from but whichever it is, it must have felt very proud of him after he decided to return the New Year’s gift he was sent by Mehmet Ali Talat.
The hamper, containing wine and ekmek kateif was given back to the UN with instructions to ‘return to sender’ as Elvis would sing. Garoyian was presumably annoyed that the wine bottles he was sent bore the insignia of the ‘TRNC’ and that the greetings card accompanying the hamper was signed by the ‘President of the TRNC’.
It was a heroic act of bravery and defiance that all other party leaders shied away from, for fear of being accused of rudeness. Not even the late Ethnarch ever returned Talat’s gifts. Being regarded as a bad-mannered peasant is a small price to pay for maintaining a nationally dignified stand.
Marios has raised patriotic standards to unattainable heights for the rest of our party leaders. But DIKO leaders have always been the most patriotic of all our politicians, which is why all of them eventually become presidente of the Republic. And Marios has shown that he has the patriotic credentials for the top job.
GREAT patriotism is not a requirement for becoming the leader of the communist party AKEL, a prestigious position, which is up for grabs every 20 to 30 years. A new commie leader will be chosen a week on Wednesday, as comrade presidente Christofias has decided to relinquish the post of AKEL Secretary General.
The week before last, our morally superior presidente, announced the qualities that the party leader should have. He said: “The new leader of the party must be ideologically consistent, an honest politician with a good name and record, a discreet life, modest, moderate, reserved, team-spirited and not individualistic, accessible and human.”
This is clearly how the comrade sees himself – as a bit of a saint – but he is being unrealistic if he genuinely believes there are other saintly communists like him in the party or the country for that matter. If he does want his successor to be another Christofias, a more honest list of qualities required would be the following:
Someone uncharismatic, not very intelligent, not very sophisticated, not too educated, not very articulate, who has an ultra-inflated opinion of himself, has authoritarian tendencies, abhors dissent, loves flattery and cannot handle criticism, someone who cannot control his emotions, capable of crying in public, lacking a sense of humour, clueless about diplomacy, a shameless populist who is a bit of a peasant and is big-headed, both literally and metaphorically; and he must not be sexy.
He will never find anyone with all these qualities, for which we thank the Lord.
SUPPORTERS of Nikos Katsourides, AKEL’s parliamentary spokesman and favourite to become sec-gen, were furious to hear the comrade saint list the above-mentioned character requirements. They felt that this was an attempt by the saintly leader to rule out Kats as his successor.
Kats, to his credit, is not one of those miserable ascetic commies. He is a bon-viveur, who loves his luxuries and the high life, is involved in business enterprises shows a healthy interest in the opposite sex and – worst of all – he is highly intelligent. This is the comrade saint’s main objection to having Kats as party leader.
He does not want someone significantly smarter than himself running the party for two reasons. First, his standing among Akelites may s
uffer by the inevitable comparisons and second he would lose control of the party as Kats will refuse to take orders from him once he is in charge.
My guess is that Saint Tofias will do everything to block Kats from becoming sec-gen, but I hope he fails. After 50 years of mediocre leadership the commie party deserves to have a bourgeois gen sec with a high IQ and sex appeal.
SPEAKING of people with claims to sainthood who lack sex appeal, we must mention the earnest DISY deputy and do-gooder Dr Eleni Theocharous who took great exception to critical remarks about her botched humanitarian expedition to the Gaza Strip.
Last Sunday a Politis columnist, implied that the expedition was geared towards earning the doctor positive PR. She had chartered a small boat to carry medicine to Gaza, knowing full well that it would never get there. On the boat she had two film crews, one from Al Jazeera and one from CNN. If she hadn’t taken them, the writer pointed out, she could have taken more humanitarian aid.
She responded with a sanctimonious letter to the paper, praising her own altruism and self-sacrifice. “And they said I was doing international PR. Yes. You put your life in direct danger for your ideals and they tell you that you are doing it to promote yourself… I have and will always have the scars from the chemical bombs of the Israelis. I got them in Rastiya (in 2006).”
In her 750-word diatribe about her saintliness, you half-expected her to announce her candidacy for the post of AKEL chief as she meets all her fellow saint’s requirements.
FOREIGN Minister Marcos Kyprianou will not return home after his visit to Rome but head on for a tour of Central and South America. He will be visiting Venezuela to pay his respects to comrade Chavez on the instructions of his boss.
There is no rational reason for the visit, comrade presidente simply wanting to show his solidarity to a fellow communist. Who knows? After Havana, we may open an embassy in Caracas as well… We now await to hear when Kyprianou will be visiting North Korea. He may have already visited without anyone being told about it.
The Venezuela visit was not publicised by the government, either.
PERHAPS the government has heeded the advice of the supreme ruler of the Dias Group Zeus Hadjicostis. At his group’s cutting of the vasilopitta party, attended by Saint Tofias, Zeus called for “a vision of military, financial, diplomatic, and mental power”.
He said: “Cyprus must acquire military strength, so that it gains negotiating power and also the power to put up strong resistance. It should seek strategic alliances with other strong powers.” A strategic alliance with Venezuela might not frighten the Turks but it is a start.
SPEAKING to hacks on Friday about some issue, the publicity-mad Health Minister Christos Patsalides said he would go as far as “Vorios Polos” to secure expert advice for an important issue. Vorios Polos is the North Pole, which is not exactly renowned for advanced medicine. I doubt there are any hospitals as it is covered in ice.
Could he have been referring to Vorios Polos in Cyprus, a small working class suburb of Nicosia adjacent to Kaimakli? In this case he would not be going very far to get expert advice. And the type of advice he would get in Vorios Polos is unlikely to be very helpful to anyone.
A BIG CRISIS looms in Kyproulla’s premier private educational institution, the English School, where parents are organising themselves to fight what they see as the taking over of the school by AKEL. A website has already been set up (www.englishchoolnews.com) and a meeting of concerned parents, who object to the de-Hellenising of school by the Akelites, has been scheduled for the end of January.
Only in Kyproulla would communists be in control of a private school that all the privileged kids of the island attend. Is this part of a plot turn the offspring of wealthy Nicosia families into communist ideologues, fighting for an end to privilege and the creation of a fairer society? We shall keep you posted.
