THE MINISTER with the highest public approval rating, according to a monumentally meaningless survey published in last Sunday’s Phil, is foreign minister Marcos Kyprianou. Bottom of the ministerial hit parade is Education Minister Andreas Demetriou.
Perhaps I am being unfair in describing the survey as meaningless, as it gives us gossip columnists something to bitch about and allows Phil show us all that even in these hard times, when jobs are being cut, it still has money to waste on a survey which tells us what we already know – that public wisdom is a contradiction in terms.
The survey showed us another thing: the paper’s total lack of humour. It actually took its survey very seriously, even though it reported the findings like changes in a pop music chart. Under the headline, ‘Marcos displaces the Lady of the Cabinet from the top’, it wrote:
“Marcos established himself in first place, leaving the lady of the Council of Ministers, Sotiroulla, who in November’s survey was top, way behind.” Meanwhile, the Education Minister Andreas Demetriou “hit the bottom, recording a significant drop.”
The good news was that Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis had “improved his rating” we were informed. “Not only did he manage to become unstuck from the bottom of the chart, but he also recorded an increase in his points, thus climbing up three places.”
It must have been that picture of him in a sports jacket next to the flowing river in the role of divine rainmaker that helped his ascent. If it keeps raining and water cuts are reduced, the miracle-worker could be top of the flops in the eagerly-awaited, summer charts.
THE JUDGMENT of the people is never wrong because it is based on the accumulated public wisdom of centuries, argue the populists. This suspect view was illustrated by the elevation of Marcos Kyprianou to the top of the popularity charts by our countrymen.
Why did he merit the highest public approval rating? The guy does pretty much nothing in terms of real work, other than to go on long trips abroad visiting exotic faraway countries, which have no diplomatic significance to our foreign policy.
He only just returned from an unofficial, nine-day visit to Australia, during which the only thing he did that qualified as official business was a half-hour meeting with the Aussie foreign minister Steven Smith in Canberra.
And to show there was a purpose to the meeting he gave Smith a cheque for AUS$100,000 for the victims of the fires. He could have got his secretary to put the cheque in the post and saved the taxpayer thousands of euros, but then he would have been stuck in Nicosia with nothing to do.
Of course he also briefed him about the latest developments regarding the ongoing negotiations for a Cyprus settlement, as Smith was very anxious to find out whether the chapter on federal governance had been closed.
NINE DAYS Down Under, for the sake of a half-hour meeting with a foreign minister is taking the piss – especially considering that the previous month his world tour had taken him to Central and South America, where he briefed Venezuelan, Brazilian and Cuban officials about the latest developments regarding the ongoing negotiations for a Cyprus settlement.
While in Australia he toured all the major cities – Victoria, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra – and met the presidents of the Cypriot communities in each city. Banquets were given in his honour, jointly, by the general managers of Marfin-Laiki and B of C and he also met the Orthodox Archbishop.
All this may explain his high approval rating as minister. We Kyproullans respect a state employee who reaches the top with minimal work, avoids going to the office and dutifully travels the world, first class, at the taxpayer’s expense, not for fun but for the sake of the national problem.
WHILE Marcos is touring the world, one of the Ethnarch’s most loyal disciples, the permanent secretary Dr Nicholas Emiliou is running the ministry. With his boss rarely visiting the shop, Dr Emiliou has been given the freedom to keep the hard-line diplomatic flame of his mentor alight.
Visiting foreign dignitaries are still being told that they cannot call on Talat, while ambassadors are having requests to meet comrade presidente declined by the good doctor. This has become a talking point in diplomatic circles with ambassadors, speculating that Dr Emiliou is keeping them way from the comrade for fear that they might persuade him to adopt a more flexible stance at the talks.
SELF-REGARDING, Paphite Health Minister Christos Patsalides rose to second place in the ministerial top of the flops. This is because, like Marcos, he is not on intimate terms with hard work and decision-making.
Under his leadership nothing seems to be done at the ministry. A state healthcare price list that the EU has been demanding for some time now has yet to be prepared while the ground-work for transforming state hospitals into autonomous organisations – a pre-requisite for the introduction of the National Health Scheme – is nowhere near complete.
However he still scores highly with public for the single health policy he has been pursuing with consistency and passion – the persecution of the American Heart Institute, because one of its doctors wounded his fragile Paphite ego.
BIG-SHOT boss of Marfin-Laiki Andreas Vgenopoulos was back in town this week to tell us of his plan to help lift our economy out of recession. His adoring fans in the media gave big prominence to his plan, which he informed the comrade mukhtar about, at a palazzo meeting.
Marfin-Laiki will be investing €100 million in the refurbishment and upgrade of the Nicosia Hilton, which apart from creating jobs would attract tourist from the high quality end of the market, said Vgenopoulos who always sounds more like politician than a banker. Nobody said when the project would start but the media were rejoicing.
The CyBC, renowned for having no sense of perspective in reporting the news, said the next day that the announcement of the investment had been greeted with satisfaction and euphoria. If it could find one person in the whole of Cyprus that felt euphoria because the Hilton Hotel would be refurbished, we will pay for his or her psychiatric treatment.
HACKS were feeling too euphoric to ask why Vgenopoulos had a pubic dig at the Central Bank Governor. He went as far as to question whether the Governor was taking decisions on his own and ignoring the wishes of the Central Bank board. He also criticised the support measures proposed by the Governor, as they did not meet with his approval. He must be longing for the days when his good friend Ttooulis was the governor and he had a carte blanche to do as he pleased.
OVER AT the B of C, its head honchos were devastated with the glowing publicity given to the Marfin-Laiki spending plan.
A few weeks earlier, the poor old B of C had announced it would pour €700 million into the economy – an amount to be given as loans, with only five per cent interest and a three-year grace period, to first-time home-buyers – and the media buried the story. The CyBC detected no euphoria to report.
Marfin-Laiki would put one seventh of that amount into the economy in order to make its hotel more profitable and still earned all the media plaudits. Marfin might not be as public-spirited as the dear old B of C, but it is much better in the public relations and promotion game.
A MAN sentenced to nine years in prison for sexually abusing his 11-year-old son was allowed to walk free this week after the Supreme Court upheld his appeal against the lower court decision. The Supreme Court had decided that incorrect procedures had been followed during the investigations.
The victim had been interviewed by a female officer, when then law stipulated that sex abuse vict
ims had to be interviewed by an officer of the same gender. And the supreme court judge considered this to support the claim of an unfair trial. He also refused to accept the report filed by the state pathologist about the abuse.
It is not the first time a suspected paedophile found guilty by a lower court has been acquitted by the Supreme Court, because of some technicalities. But we have never heard the Commissioner for the Rights of Children, Leda Koursoumba, ever express an opinion about these outrageous decisions.
She is far too busy pontificating about more important issues such as parents who smoke in the presence of their children to have time to talk about child abusers. From this we should conclude smokers pose a much bigger threat to the well-being of children than convicted paedophiles set free by the Supreme Court.
ARCHBISHOP Chrysostomos, apart from a great political thinker, astute businessman, great patriot, orator and moralist, is also proving to be a great pedagogue. His simple three-step method to improve discipline at our schools, presented earlier in the week deserves a trial.
First, a teacher has to talk to a badly-behaved youngster and persuade him to improve his behaviour. If the kid ignores the advice and carries on misbehaving, the teacher should pull his ear. If the bad behaviour persists we move to step three which involves administering a slap or two.
He did not say on which part of the miscreant’s body the slap should be administered, nor did he advise what should be done if the kid is bigger than the teacher and decided to retaliate.
STAYING on educational matters, the English School has made a bit of a cock-up of the investigation into accusations made by a group of parents claiming that certain teachers were propagating political party views at the school.
The school’s board sent a letter to the parents dated March 9, saying that the head and deputy head teacher had completed their investigation and the “prima facie findings of the report do not justify further investigation of [the] complaints”.
On March 12, the head teacher called in one of the protesting parents to discuss a complaint she had made and told her that he had not yet completed the investigation into the claims of politicisation.
Is someone being economical with the truth?
UNIONS at the Cyprus Tourism Organisation will hold a work stoppage for a couple of hours this week for a novel reason. They will strike in support of two senior managers who have been ignoring the decision of the general manager moving them to different posts. The two senior managers have refused to leave their current posts and have persuaded the unions to go on strike in support of this blatant insubordination.
In short, the unions are defending the right of their senior managers to ignore the orders of the general manager. These senior managers should have been sacked by now, but I suspect it is the general manager who will eventually lose her job for showing utter disregard for the wishes of her subordinates. In Kyproulla, the majority is always in the right.
