ALL’S WELL that ends well. Even though at the start of the week DIKO was, “a volcano divided into two tendencies” (Sim, Monday) in the wake of the Euro-elections, after Wednesday’s “all-night thriller,” (Phil, Thursday), “unity was up in the air” (Pol, Friday) again by the weekend.
If you are going to use a cliché, you may as well use it correctly. A volcano is either simmering or about to erupt, but it has never been said or written before that Mount Vesuvius was “divided into two tendencies.” Geologically speaking, there is only one tendency in a volcano once it gets going – to stay in the government.
And why was Wednesday’s meeting a “thriller”? Was this because it had not finished by the newspaper deadline or because the meeting had been going on for nine hours? Whatever the case, the only thing you could not call the meeting was a “thriller”, which implied excitement, nail-biting suspense and unexpected twists.
You do not have to be a political analyst to know that any meeting of super-bores such as Garoyian, Koulias, Colocassides, Junior, Fotiou and co. would be mind-numbingly tedious. And when this festival of boredom lasts nine hours, it qualifies as torture – and I am not resorting to poetic licence here.
The meeting did not even have the unpredictability element of a “thriller”. Everyone with half a brain knew that, the highly-principled patriots of DIKO would never leave the government, no matter how many hours they talked about it; not with the Cyprob going through a critical phase.
Also, comrade presidente will be appointing the new boards of the semi-governmental organisations in two months and DIKO, as a matter of principle, could not sacrifice its share of seats and chairmanships; not with the Cyprob going through such a critical phase.
But most importantly, the party could not leave the son of its founder, foreign minister Marcos Kyprianou, without a job and ruin his world travel plans. There are still places in the world he hasn’t visited as part of his Cyprob enlightenment world tour.
THE DECISION to stay in the government was not the only positive outcome of the “all-night thriller”. The sons of the two families that own DIKO, Marcos and Nicholas, kissed and made up after their public falling out. Credit to Marios Garoyian, the caretaker leader who is looking after the party until one of the two is ready to take control.
The rift was caused by a rather obtuse remark made by Ethnarch junior, when discussing the party’s pitiful showing in the Euro-elections. He said that Marcos “reminded us of Nicos Anastassides (the Führer) during the period of the referendum.”
As Junior has never been a big fan of Nik (an indication of his lack of judgment?) we can only assume that this was meant as a put-down. The good thing is that Junior said he had been misquoted and Marcos was happy to kiss and make up for the good of the family volcano.
THE TWO tendencies of the DIKO volcano, according to the newspaper geologists, were the Tassiki and the Kyprianiki. The former, led by Junior, wanted the eruption to take place and the government alliance to be turned to ash, while the latter wanted to stop the lava’s flow, because it would threaten the rusfeti potential.
With the party membership split in two, each side supporting a dead former leader, you wondered who supported the living leader, Garoyian. The geologists did not mention a Garoyianiki tendency in the volcano, which raises another serious question: to which wing of the party does the leader belong?
We suspect he is a Kyprianikos out of loyalty to the great Spy, who gave him his first break in politics. He is also a Tassikos out of loyalty to the great Tassos ,who helped him become party leader. He is also a Christofiakos, out of loyalty to the great comrade who handed him the House presidency for two terms.
In his speech during the “thriller”, Garoyian said: “I, first, take responsibility for our weaknesses, prevarication and inaction.” But being a true leader, he blamed everyone else as well for the low share of the vote. “Nobody is without responsibility for what has happened to our historic party,” he said.
This was a perfect advert of his lame leadership: ‘I take responsibility, but everyone else is to blame as well for our defeat.’
SOME THREE weeks ago, Politis daily columnist Sener Levent wrote about his visit to the home of a highly influential Greek Cypriot, who was acquainted with all our presidentes. Levent sat by the swimming pool with this big-shot and was shocked to hear the man’s views about the Cyprob. He told him the following:
“The best solution in current conditions is two separate, neighbouring states with Turkey as the only guarantor power. We lost the war. The defeated side accepts the conditions set by the victor and if it does not there is no agreement. This is what always happened in history.”
Last Sunday, excerpts of this conversation were also carried in an article by Makarios Droushiotis in Politis in which he wrote that the man was a media mogul, whose organs promoted a line of “national dignity”. It was easy to guess who the mogul was as there are only three in Kyrpoulla and two disqualified themselves – one does not have a swimming pool and the other is not interested in politics.
THE IDENTITY of the swimming-pool owner was revealed by Alecos Constantinides in Alithia on Wednesday. It was Zeus Hadjicostis, owner of the bash-patriotic, Dias media group, which owns Simerini, Radio Proto, Sigma TV and several lifestyle mags.
The revelation came as a big shock disappointment. The man whose bash-patriotic organs issue certificates of patriotism and treachery on a daily basis, wanted us to hand over the occupied territories to Turkey and to accept all her conditions.
We have been checking the Simerini column of Lazarus, the Zeus group’s bash-patriotism preacher-in-chief but he has written nothing about Zeus’ defeatist views. He has not said a word about it on his morning radio show, nor did he invite any of his bash-patriotic guests to attack the disseminator of these views, as is the normal practice.
Yet people who say much less than what Zeus told Levent are routinely savaged by Lazarus and his radio Rottweilers as “defeated minds”, who are “lacking in patriotism and dignity” and are “prepared to have dealings with the aggressor”. I hate to say it but by ignoring Zeus’ nationally damaging views, I fear Lazarus may be guilty of the double standards that he often accuses the evil foreigners of.
LIKE MANY politicians and volcano-watchers all this week, Lazarus has been shedding his tears about the low turn-out in the European elections. Never before in Kyproulla had 40 per cent of the electorate chosen not to vote.
The explanations for this phenomenon were varied but they all came with a note of sadness – voters were disillusioned with politics and politicians; the election issues left them disinterested; there was growing political apathy; the young were not interested in politics; the idea of the active citizen had been eroded.
All these are perfectly acceptable explanations, but nobody mentioned the most obvious. Many voters could not find or could not be bothered to look for their election booklet.
BIG AL Downer did not hang around to celebrate his induction into the Hall of Infamy. But if he deserved a place in the Hall, so does Zeus, who said much worse things than the Aussie.
It was interesting to read an article by a man who had attended the infamous meeting at which Big Al, allegedly said that certain newspapers and television stations disgusted him. The man, who was present, said he had never said such a thing at the meeting, which was neither closed nor secret, and that the whole thing had been made up.
Al need
not worry that he would be kicked out of the Hall. True, he earned his place thanks to calculated misinformation by the media, but then again so did most of the other foreign Hall of Infamers.
EVERYONE was shocked by the obscene amount of money Real Madrid paid Manchester United for Christiano Ronaldo last week. In one week, the new Real president Florentino Perez had paid close to £150 million for two players.
In Kyproulla, we have our own Florentino Perez, in the form of Omonia chairman Miltiades Neophytou – the big contractor who always makes the lowest bids for government projects and seems to be landing all the contracts. Admittedly everything here is on a much smaller scale, but Omonia is spending money like the Kyproulla version of Real.
Apparently Neophytou has so much money at his disposal, he does not even bother haggling. He is always willing to pay the asking price.
For instance, the former Olympiakos Piraeus coach, Takis Lemonis, who was hired a couple of months ago, signed a contract for 26 months worth €1.2 million. This will give him a monthly salary of €46,000 per month plus bonuses of €100,000 for winning the league etc. The package also includes 125 air tickets to Athens, 43 of which are club class.
THE CHAIRMAN of Greek club Ergotelis, when contacted by Neophytou about the possible transfer of one of his players, asked for a €300,000 transfer fee, expecting to have to lower his asking price to get a deal. Instead, Neophytou agreed to pay the asking price. The Ergotelis chairman then proposed that half the amount could be paid in advance and the balance after a few months, which is standard practice. Neophytou would have none of it, insisting that he paid the amount in full immediately.
This guy cannot be a Cypriot businessman.
DISY’S two victorious MEPs were pictured together on the night official results were announced. Ioannis Kasoulides received a record number of votes and Eleni Theocharous received the second highest number of votes (but not for her dress sense). Both are doctors but that night they looked like a jubilant bride and groom at their wedding reception.
What possessed Dr Theocharous to wear that bridal, voile top, nobody can say, but Costas Constantinou hit the nail on the head when he wrote that she looked like a ‘forest nymphet’. And that was a polite way of describing it.
