BY THIS time next week we will all have voted in the European elections for the party that ‘will make Cyprus stronger’ in the EU, or the party that will give us ‘a vote with dignity’ or the party that will ‘send a clear message to Europe’, or the party that will make the EU more human.
Personally I am tempted to vote for the Cake party which has the best name, is standing in elections for the first time and is the only party which has a Pontian as a candidates. Radio listeners will know all about Cake as its advert is played regularly, after CyBC’s somber warning ‘a paid political advertisement follows’.
I had originally thought that Cake was a spoof-party, but after listening more carefully to the radio I realised that it was the acronym of the fledgling Kinima Epanenosis Kyprou (Movement for the Re-unification of Kypros [not Chrysostomides]). The acronym is KEK, but the announcer utters it in the same way that we Greeks pronounce ‘cake’.
But if Cake is too much of an unknown quantity to digest, you can cast your vote for a well-known fruitcake of which there are plenty standing. This establishment’s favourite is the former justice minister, former Lefkara mayor and current vice-president of EDEK Appomenos Appomenou.
If elected, Appomenou said he would “focus his attention to the resistance against the re-submission of a plan, ‘twin brother’ of the Annan plan.”
OUR BELOVED Cyprob has dominated the Euro-election campaigns of the patriotic parties, which always feel the need to advertise their heroic resistance to a settlement, not to mention their devotion to the legacy of the late Ethnarch.
A leading Eurocake candidate accused comrade presidente of abandoning the Ethnarch’s successful Cyprob policies, while the more intellectual, deputy leader of DIKO, complained that he was dismantling them. Shredding them and putting them out with the garbage would have been preferable, but for now we will have to settle for their dismantling.
EDEK has adopted a subtler approach, telling us that by voting for the party we would ‘make Cyprus more powerful.’ I can think of a lot of things we would make Cyprus by sending Sophocles Sophocleous to Strasbourg, but more powerful is certainly not one of them.
NEW SOCIALIST party, DIKO has been crudely milking the ‘no-vote’, featuring ‘Oxi’ in its campaign messages. ‘No more concessions’ is the slogan in the poster, which advises us to ‘Send a clear message to Europe’, as if anyone in Europe gives a damn.
The visual of this poster is rather pathetic, with a serious-looking blonde unconvincingly holding up her hand in a ‘stop gesture’. She could just as well have been sending a clear message to her husband, that there would be ‘no more sex’ until he bought her the new portable sauna closet that Telemarketing was advertising on TV.
Come on DIKO, it is not bland blondes who utter the heroic ‘nos’ in Kyproulla, but mean-looking, Alpha males with moustaches.
The other ‘no’ message was ‘no to Turkish guarantees,’ another issue of great interest and concern at the European Parliament.
DIKO’s patriotic campaign is essentially targeted at comrade presidente. The concessions it wants to stop are being made by the presidente who was also dismantling the policies of the Ethnarch.
So why is the party, with irreproachable patriotic values, still a member of comrade Tofias’ government alliance? Does its principled leader Marios Garoyian not understand that by staying in the alliance he has become an accomplice of Tofias who is making the dangerous concessions DIKO has been campaigning against?
I hate to say it but DIKO’s surrealistic behaviour – being in opposition to the government it is a member of – could be interpreted as opportunistic by people who are not aware of the party’s historic sacrifices in the long struggle to liberate Kyproulla from Turkish occupation.
Its decision to embrace socialism is just another of these sacrifices. It wants its MEP to belong to the Socialist Party group in the European Parliament rather than the Liberals who are consistently pro-Turkish, and have refused to change stance despite DIKO exhortations.
A pity there is not an Opportunist Party group in Strasbourg, which DIKO would have joined without the need for an ideological transformation. It could have its kek and eat it as it has always been accustomed.
ANYONE with a taste for rich fruit-cake, would be voting for DISY ‘aristindin’ candidate Andreas Pitsillides, who has cornered the billboard market. There are probably more billboards with his handsome, youthful face pasted on them than all the other candidates put together.
You just cannot escape the blue-eyed theologian. No matter where you are – town, countryside, highway, home reading the paper, surfing the web – you will see him staring at you like a benign big brother in a totalitarian regime. The only thing he hasn’t done yet is book time slots to appear in our dreams, in case someone short-sighted or blind missed the posters.
In the last four weeks, Pitsillides, whom nobody apart from his family and work colleagues had heard of before, has become a household name and his face more recognisable than a Facebook group has been set up in his honour, titled ‘No more posters of Pitsillides’ and by yesterday its members numbered over 900.
WHO THE hell is this golden boy Pitsillides? He is a theologian, with an MA from Cambridge in ancient Hebrew currently doing a PhD, who works as the director of Kykkos monastery. He obviously did not do any courses in Christian humility, while studying theology, or if he did his vanity was too strong to be suppressed.
He is not fabulously wealthy, from what we know, and the rumours are that the tab for his election campaign, which must have exceeded the million-euro mark, would be picked up by his boss, the money-bags Bishop Nikiforos, CEO of Kykkos monastery.
His website, which he modestly describes as ‘subversively innovative’ in the video of his welcoming speech, alone, would have cost more than the €50,000 that a candidate is entitled, by law, to spend on his election campaign.
But as the Chief Returning Officer explained yesterday, the election law had not necessarily been violated, because it contains a classic Kyproullan loop-hole, which makes the law monumentally pointless.
A candidate cannot personally spend more than 50 grand on his campaign, but his supporters could spend as much as they like. And when you count Nikiforos among your supporters, the funds that can be spent are limitless.
MONEY-BAGS Nikiforos took some time off the Pitsillides campaign yesterday to conduct the wedding service for comrade presidente’s actress daughter Christina who was tying the knot with Nicos Moudouros.
Wedding services are not normally held at the Kykkos church, but an exception has been made for the daughter of Nikiforos’ comrade. The reception, which was to be held in the gardens of the monastery, was unlikely to have been a glamorous event as tens of thousands of AKEL-supporting proles were expected to turn up to congratulate the young couple.
Apparently, the original thought was to limit the number of guests, but the father of the bride, perhaps fearing that many of his followers would feel snubbed, had a change of heart, and put paid to any idea of a glamorous wedding. People were sent out to the refugee estates and AKEL coffeeshops to distribute invitations.
SPEAKING of plebs, this year’s pleb-fest, also known as the Cyprus State Fair, has been particularly disappointing. Not only have many exhibitors stayed away but so has a sizeable number of the plebs who usually treated it as family day out.
The recession obviously affected this year’s fair. Some exhibitors were particularly angry when t
hey found out that large exhibition areas had been rented out at very cheap rates, at the last minute, to make up the numbers, whereas they had paid the full whack for space, months ago.
A sign of the organisers’ desperation is that many of the Made in China trinket peddlars who last year had their stalls outside the Fair’s grounds, were invited inside this year. There is a big stand, exhibiting high tech products such as peanuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios and dried fruit.
OUR GOOD friend Charilaos would be happy to know that he is not the only man in the world who believes Kyproulla’s economy was in better shape than any other EU member-state’s.
Sir Howard Davies, former chairman of the UK’s Financial Service Authority and currently director of the London School of Economics, referred to our economy in a speech he gave at the Hay Festival last week. This is what he said, according to The Daily Telegraph:
“The European economic forecast is pretty grim. About the only place that doesn’t look too bad is Cyprus and that’s really due to money laundering by crooked Russians.” A bit of a sweeping generalisation from the director of the LSE, but we hope Charilaos would find the time to put him in his place.
I will just paraphrase how a Central Bank official had once responded to allegations of Russian money laundering by hypocritical Brits. When a Russian brings his millions to Cyprus he is laundering, but when he takes them to the UK, to buy a house in Knightsbridge, he is investing.
CHARILAOS’ proven talent for putting a positive spin on everything, from bland non-events to gloomy forecasts, was evident this week when he called a news conference to subtly congratulate himself for the government’s mega-successful bond issue, which was over-subscribed five-fold.
He wanted to raise €1 billion and instead total bids reached €5.4 billion. This was a vote of confidence for our positive economic indicators, healthy public finances and economic policies, he said. He admitted that the big demand could also have had something to do with the “very competitive” 3.75 per cent interest.
It was not just “very competitive,” but it was the highest interest offered on bonds by any government since the recession started. Charilaos did not dwell too long on the yield of his bonds during the news conference, but you still have to admire the way he turned the issue of borrowing a huge amount of money, at a higher price than any other government, into a personal triumph and an unprecedented success for Kyproulla.
TURKISH audacity can always be relied on to inspire the self-righteous indignation of the defenders of our national pride at Phil. It is admirable that 35 years after the invasion, the hacks of the paper can maintain the same passionate intensity and zeal of the immediate post-74 period, in reporting the outrages perpetrated by the Turks.
What is more admirable is their ability to seethe with anger over issues that most normal (admittedly, less patriotic) people consider totally trivial. On the front page of last Monday’s edition, there was a plug for a story on the inside pages, under the headline, ‘Our tradition on a stand in the occupied area’.
The story summary on the front page said: “When audacity has no limits: postcards of rural life in the free areas being sold in Kyrenia.” The latest example of audacity was brought to the attention of the paper by a visitor to Kyrenia harbour who was shocked to see postcards of the Limassol wine-producing villages, featuring old Greek Cypriot ladies, on sale in a pseudo-periptero.
And the paper wrote: “He wondered how villages under the control of the Cyprus Republic were being advertised in the occupied area… as if they had also been seized by Attila.”
You need either a very conspiratorial mind or no mind at all to read so much political significance into the sale of a few postcards.
I SINCERELY hope that the actions of the son of our most patriotic tree-hugger, Giorgos Perdikis will not affect his father’s candidacy in the Euro-elections. Apparently Perdikis junior has been released from the National Guard after serving just a year. We do not know the reasons for this but we hope he has a bloody good excuse because it could undermine his father’s well-earned and well-deserved reputation as a courageous bash-patriot.
AN UNPAID election advertisement follows. ‘To find out more about Andreas Pitsillides go to subversively innovative website: www.apitsillides.com’
