IN KYPROULLA nobody ever acts out of self-interest or greed. The motives for our actions are always idealistic and noble because the single concern of everyone is the greater good of our society.
For instance, secondary school teachers’ union OELMEK has been fighting against the Cyprus University’s decision to open up its admissions policy and give a few places to students with international qualifications from private schools in order to ‘protect state education’.
If the university did not reserve all its places for state school kids, as has been the practice until now, state education would be destroyed, claimed the caring union. This was why it decided to resort to blackmail – it would boycott national modern Greek exams, if the university did not change its decision.
What nobody has mentioned is that teachers are so keen on saving state education because it has been designed to serve teachers and not students. This is a system that hires even the most unsuitable and laziest graduates – the only requirement is a degree – and allows them to teach for the rest of their working life, irrespective of how hopeless they may be at the job.
Most state school teachers do their job so badly, that even the brightest and hardest-working kids need to have afternoon private lessons to have a chance of getting a decent mark in the national exams. But it is all worthwhile, as the high demand for private tuition in the afternoon allows state school teachers double or triple their monthly income: and they do not even declare it to the tax authorities.
The luckiest are the teachers who are involved in the drafting of the end of year exams. From what we hear, they charge a significantly higher hourly rate for private lessons, because they can guarantee a high pass-mark for their students.
STATE education needs to be protected because it provides the ideal setting for the private lessons scam. Teachers do their job badly during school hours and thus create the need for extra tuition in the afternoon. In short, state education is not free.
Parents who want their kids to go to university end up paying as much in afternoon tuition to state school teachers, as they would pay to send their offspring to a private school.
As for the kids whose parents cannot afford to pay for afternoon lessons, they leave school with a piss-poor education because their teachers are too tired to teach in class in the morning.
OELMEK obviously fears that if university admissions are opened up to kids with GCEs, demand for afternoon lessons would fall – especially if the intake from private schools is increased, which will inevitably happen.
This may explain the latest peace-offering to teachers by our timid Education Minister Andreas Demetriou. On Thursday he announced as a compromise proposal that private school students who apply to the university, for courses in philosophy and classics, modern Greek, law, history and archaeology, will have to pass the national modern Greek examination taken by state school kids.
This was a blatant case of bribery: to pass this exam, students from private schools would need to have afternoon lessons with state school teachers – as it generates more business for OELMEK’s members, who care so passionately about state education.
DEMETRIOU’S bribery proposal is quite pathetic, indirectly encouraging the continuation of the afternoon lessons scam as well as allowing union bullies to think that they have the right to dictate the university’s admissions policy.
Then again, late last year, when teachers were reported for giving afternoon lessons (it is a violation of the public service law) Demetriou said nothing, afraid to take on the bullies of the union. As for the principled union, it publicly defended the right of teachers to break the law.
When you have teachers who knowingly break the law, happily cheat their employer (the state), calculatingly let down the kids, resort to blackmail to defend their personal interests and consider compromise a dirty word, it is a miracle that our education system is still not producing large numbers of criminals.
EVEN OUR people-friendly, pro-union government has turned against the arrogant bullies of OELMEK. In fact, the union appears to be losing the battle – despite the minister’s bribery compromise proposal – to save state education, with the two big parties set to vote in favour of the university’s new admissions policy.
Its threat to boycott the exams was ignored, leaving it with no option but to resort to the last refuge of the scoundrel – patriotism. In the last few days, union representatives warned that accepting students with GCEs would be a blow to Hellenism and the Greek language. Back-stabbing Britain was also thrown into the equation for added effect.
The nationalist angle was a smart move as it won over the support of bash-patriotic hacks and politicians. The university’s vice rector was told by the presenter of a Sigma morning show that “you will hand over the university to the British with the GCEs.”
“When at last will this unfortunate country free itself of the British yoke?” asked a Simerini columnist, while a writer in Phil found it interesting to note that all hacks and politicians who “are in favour of the British exams” were the unpatriotic supporters of the peace talks.
It all makes perfect sense now. Self-sacrificing teachers are not only defending state education, but they are also fighting for Hellenism, even though they only realised it five days ago.
STAYING on the subject of patriotism, it appears that our postal services have been conspiring against the Movement for Freedom and Justice in Cyprus.
Speaking on the Lazaros radio show earlier in the week, the founder and leader of the Movement, Panos Pip Ioannides accused the post office of failing to deliver most of the invitations for the presentation of his book Bloody Truth. Some one thousand invitations were sent out and only a hundred people showed up.
The possibility that people had received the invitations and but refused to attend the launch of a yet another Cyprob book was not explored by Pip.
THE CASE for a post office conspiracy became much stronger after the second incident involving the Pip movement. Some 1,000 letters were sent out informing people that the movement would be holding its AGM on May 6, but only 40 per cent had reached their recipient. What had happened to the rest?
Had the government instructed the post office not to deliver all the letters in an attempt to quash Pip’s movement, or were the British secret services involved? The possibility that half the letters did not arrive because our post office service is one of the worst in the world was not explored.
EDEK DEPUTY Marinos Sizopoulos did not explore this possibility either, when he unveiled his own conspiracy theory at the legislature last Monday. Sizopoulos claimed the banks were calculatingly delaying sending out credit card statements in order to impose the 12.5% interest and additional 5% penalty for delayed payment.
He spoke about this outrage on a morning radio show and when the presenter asked him whether he had blown the issue out of proportion, he insisted that he was not the only one to have been shafted in this way by the banks. Several people had told him they had not received their credit card statements on time to avoid the interest charge, he said
Sure, because the first thing a person does when his credit card statement arrives late is to call Sizopoulos and complain.
BRITISH cuckoos in the north have become more hard-line on the Cyprob than Rauf Denktator since the European Court of Justice’s ruling in the Orams case.
Cuckoos are championing partition, because they know this is the only way to hold on to the stolen properties th
ey occupy and try to make it out that this is the best solution for the Turkish Cypriots as well.
(Bird-watchers inform me that cuckoos are lazy birds that move into nests built by other birds and make them their own, just like thousands of Brits have done in the north)
The knowledge that that they are using stolen property for a cheap holiday home has not tempered their arrogance or delusions of moral superiority. Speaking to Cyprus Today newspaper, Steve Trenfield a cuckoo for three years said: “Our house is on exchange land and if a Greek Cypriot citizen came on to my land and demanded his home back, I would call the police.”
Cuckoo Steve also threatened to call off the peace talks. “If one Greek Cypriot gets the land back where he is never going to live, that will be the end to the peace talks.”
A MORE eloquent case for the cuckoos was put across in an article yesterday’s issue of Cyprus Today, by one-time Denktator adviser and long-term resident of the north Tom Roche, who might not be a cuckoo himself.
Roche, indicating that he has become a local when it came to the use of hyperbole, wrote about the Orams ruling: “Europe has handed Greek Cypriots a nuclear deterrent.” Roche, another committed pro-partition Brit, blamed everything on the EU.
“Good old EU which claims to use its ‘good offices’ to bring about a solution in Cyprus has instead re-opened old wounds and created a climate of fear and mistrust which would do nothing to advance the cause of peace.” But surely peace is guaranteed now that the Greek Cypriots have a nuclear deterrent.
THE POLITICAL comeback of former foreign minister and lieutenant of the late Ethnarch, Yiorgos Lillikas has begun. After 18 months in self-imposed exile, the ultra-ambitious Yiorgos decided to make a contribution to public debate with full-on attack on comrade presidente, whom he accused of handling of the Cyprob with “incredible naivety”.
He was speaking at an event in Athens in memory of the Ethnarch. Yiorkos has re-invented himself as a hard-line nationalist and could soon be challenging Pip for the post of father of all bash-patriots. He said nothing we do not hear every day on our radio stations from the other national saviours.
Apart from the treacherous concessions the comrade made at the negotiating table, he was guilty of another political crime. “The new president returned the Cyprus problem to the claws of Britain and the US,” Yiorkos lamented.
I think Yiorkos is making a big mistake in thinking that he will carve out a political role for himself with all the hard-line clichés.
MIGRATION Department boss Anny Shakali has surpassed herself with her decision to deport a woman from the Philippines because the latter’s husband had filed for a divorce. The woman was informed about the divorce application when she was taken to police cells, just before her deportation.
She was also informed that her residence permit which expired in September had been cancelled by Ms Shakalli who is also an expert on relationships. “From the moment there is a disturbance in the family relationship, the permit can be cancelled. If there is an application for divorce, that is enough to convince us. It doesn’t matter that they were still living under the same roof, that doesn’t mean the relationship was normal.”
So if any of you out there are having problems with your partner, send a letter to Ms Shakalli and she will tell you if your relationship is normal or not – if the post office ever delivers the letter.
