ONCE THE people, who have been protesting against the acquittal of the 10 cops by the criminal court, end their campaign against the judges they could buy a few bunches of bananas and head to the Attorney-general’s office.
If there is one office of the state that has earned the right to be served with vast quantities of bananas it is the AG’s. Over the last 10 days, its top officials have done a lot more to discredit the law than the three judges, who acquitted the cops, but have received no credit for their efforts.
We wrote about the AG Petros Clerides’ embarrassingly emotional outburst against the judges, last week, when he resorted to the dubious legal argument about the judges not respecting him, because they did not allow him to ask a question while the court decision was being read.
His feelings had been hurt by the judges so he hit back by announcing on TV that we could not always trust our justice system. It was not very mature behaviour by Clerides but it deflected public attention away from the idea that the cops were acquitted because the prosecution had messed up.
SUBSEQUENT antics by the AG’s boys suggested that this possibility could not be ruled out. I refer to deputy AG Akis Papasavvas and Counsel Savvas Matsas, the man in charge of the prosecution in the cops’ case.
The two have been showing off their maturity, by exchanging below-the-belt blows on the airwaves. Matsas started it, by subscribing to the conspiracy theory we had published last week – the police passing information to Mega TV about the traffic violation fine he had had cancelled – in an interview by published by Phil on Tuesday. In the same interview he said police were dangerous as they “make false accusations and incriminate citizens”.
On Tuesday night, Papasavvas said on a TV show that the Legal Services department did not share Matsas’ views about the police and there was no evidence to back the claim that the police had acted vindictively towards the public prosecutor. Matsas called the show and asked why Papasavvas, without being asked, had rubbished his claims.
It does not end there. On Thursday, Simerini listed three cases in which the cops had allegedly fabricated evidence and its source was Matsas, prompting Papasavvas, yet again, to tell us that, in effect his colleague was talking rubbish.
He repeated his morally superior line on a radio show on Friday, effectively calling a Matsas a liar who had made up his accusations. Matsas then called up the show to say that Papasavvas was clueless on legal matters, having dismissed the accusations without ever investigating them.
With a legally clueless guy and a man who spread unfounded allegations in key positions at the AG’s office, is it any wonder that open and shut cases are routinely lost by the public prosecution service?
MATSAS had a point. Papasavvas was the nutcase who, when serving as senior counsel, wrote a vicious weekly column heaping endless abuse on the president and the AG, claiming it was his democratic right to do so. He would also routinely attack the cops on radio shows.
He has also lambasted the cops’ behaviour in the Al Capone case a few weeks ago, so why did he object to Matsas’ also having a go at the police? Does he have the exclusive right on cop-bashing and felt that his colleague was infringing on his territory? No, Clerides was away and Papasavvas felt he was in charge of the shop.
And there was no way he would allow any employee of the AG’s office to behave in the insanely irresponsible way he always behaved when he was not charge of the shop. What poor old Matsas said was nothing compared to what Papasavvas would say in public about the President, the AG (the last three were all pilloried by him) and the cops.
LAST WEEK we reported the concerted efforts of our Washington correspondents and members of the Cypriot US lobby, headed by the courageous Panicos Papanicolaou, to prevent a meeting between Secretary of State and Hillary Clinton and Mehmet Ali Talat.
Having realised that the desired cancellation would not happen, they set their sights lower, demanding that Hillary should at least meet our foreign minister Marcos Kyprianou before Talat. This seemed to have been arranged. She supposedly agreed to meet him on the sidelines of one of two international meetings in early April – one was being held in the Czech Republic and the other in Turkey.
But Marcos was not satisfied with this compromise, as he wanted to be formally invited to Washington, before Talat’s visit. It is doubtful he would get his way, but the US administration should not be too worried about the consequences.
As one newspaper correspondent wrote: “The issue affects, to a degree, relations between Cyprus and the Obama administration, but this does not mean serious ructions would be caused.” Hillary can sleep easy.
WHY WAS such a big fuss made about the Talat-Hillary meeting? Why would anyone with a functioning brain care that she would meet Talat? And why would anyone, even with a malfunctioning brain, think it would be a lesser evil if she met our Marcos before the Turk? Are we in some competition in which the side that first secures the most meetings with big-shot US officials wins Kyrenia? Would it make the slightest bit of difference to our lives, to our economy or the ozone layer?
The only person who gave an answer to our questions was Euroko leader Demetris Syllouris. “Any attempts at the upgrading of the pseudo-state must be stopped by the government,” he said. So long as nobody stops the upgrading of political stupidity, we are OK.
WITH YOUNG politicians like Ethnarch Junior around there is no fear of anything like this happening. His already considerable arrogance further boosted (as if it needed boosting) by his election to the post of DIKO deputy leader, Nicholas now decided to issue political instructions to comrade Presidente.
He reprimanded our wise leader for expressing an opinion about the pseudo-elections in the pseudo-state. The comrade said that if the hardliner Dervis Eroglu won it would be a backward step in Cyprob talks, angering Junior who decreed that “the President of the Republic should, on no account, with his comments upgrade the illegal procedures of an illegal entity.”
If Junior tells us how a few words could upgrade the illegal procedures we will tell him how a politician could upgrade his intelligence by not talking.
PRESIDENT Obama’s grimace when he was likened to Alexander the Great by the Orthodox Archbishop of America Demetrios, at the annual ceremony to mark March 25 at the White House, said it all.
A clip of his ‘this priest must have a screw loose,’ facial expression was posted on You Tube under the headline, “President Obama compared to Alexander the Great – Obama and Biden crack up.”
The Archbishop said: “We are confident Mr President, that you, following the brilliant example of Alexander the Great (everyone laughs) will be able to cut the Gordian knot of these unresolved issues…” He mentioned three issues of interest to Greeks, one of which, believe it or not, was the Cyprob.
Obama responded thus: “What a great honour, I will tell Michelle that I was compared to Alexander the Great; I will see whether that gets me a little more respect; at home she knows she’s still the boss.”
Offsite interpreted Obama’s humorous quip as yet another “message” that “Greece is not among the countries that he considers even remotely significant in his foreign policy” and Cyprus even so. While this may be the case, I think Obama’s real message was that you have to laugh at a priest trying to dictate the US President’s foreign policy.
Kyproulla would be a much happier place if our own politicians followed Obama’s example and made a joke every time the Archbishop made
one of his idiotic public statements.
NOT MUCH chance of this happening in our humourless political circus. Our politicians are in awe of high-ranking priests – even if they are not Orthodox. Our comrade Presidente was in Rome on Friday and was given an audience by Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican Apostolic Palace.
This was his second meeting with the Pope, having also visited him when he was President of the House, a couple of years ago. What did he hope to get out of a second visit? Rumours are that he was unhappy with the communist faith and was considering embracing Catholicism but we have been unable to establish if there was any truth in them because Akis Papasavvas was not answering his mobile.
STAYING on religious matters, I think that some of the headline-writers of Phil need to go back to school and have some lessons about religious terminology. In Friday’s issue of the paper, the sub-headline of a story about the damage caused by a strong whirlwind in Larnaca read: “Whirlwind and hailstones cause biblical destruction.”
The biblical destruction consisted of some solar heating panels being blown off roofs, corrugated iron garages being wrecked, shop signs being destroyed and some satellite dishes becoming unfastened. Nobody was killed or seriously injured and nobody was made homeless which was just as well because there was no berth at Larnaca marina for Noah’s Ark to dock and take the victims of the biblical exaggeration.
AFTER a year of pretending he was pretty laid-back, liberal sort of chap our Presidente is finding it increasingly more difficult to suppress his authoritarian streak, which AKEL members always knew about.
His calls for unity are a thinly-disguised cover for his utter dislike of criticism and dissent. He wants us all to support his every decision and action unquestioningly, in the name of unity. Even the cases of blatant rusfeti which abound under the comrade should be accepted because they bear the stamp of the leader’s indisputable wisdom.
Of course the comrade’s idea of unity is his Akelites controlling everything. He is now using his commissars on the board of the Central Bank to undermine the Governor Athanasios Orphanides, who is way too independent to survive under an authoritarian commie Presidente. The commissars, on the instructions of the palazzo, have been publicly complaining that Orphanides takes decisions without consulting them.
The irony is that our communist leader has sided with the multi-millionaire banker Andreas Vgenopoulos, who has been attacking Orphanides, because he blocked Vgen’s latest plans regarding the shareholding of Marfin-Popular Bank.
In a rational world, a communist president would be siding with the Governor of the Central Bank, whose responsibility is safeguarding the interests of our banking system and our economy, rather than with a banker whose only interest is profit.
But it seems that the only communist ideal close to the comrade’s heart is authoritarian control which he will do anything to achieve – even enter an alliance with a banker.
AT LEAST in China ideological purity remains intact. I read in The Spectator that “Chinese producers working on turning Marx’s Das Kapital into a musical show “complete with big dance numbers and catchy songs.” The director He Nian told a Chinese newspaper that “the particular performance style we choose is not important, but Marxist theories cannot be distorted.”
How you can make one of the densest most boring books on economics into a musical we do not know but we are looking forward to hearing catchy songs about the Falling Rate of Profit and the Creation of Surplus Value, even if they are in Chinese.
