PRESIDENT Christoias needs to develop a thicker skin. His over-sensitivity to criticism, which, admittedly, sometimes veers on the abusive, has taken comic proportions as his associates often resort to absurd methods to defend him.

A couple of months ago, AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou, who has been assigned the thankless task of answering the president’s critics, claimed that certain circles were plotting Christofias ‘physical elimination’. Before this, Kyprianou and other presidential associates claimed that the objective was the president’s ‘political elimination’, but having failed to achieve this, his opponents had turned nasty.

THEOPHANIS Hadjigeorgious, the man who has allegedly confessed to driving Andis Hadjicostis’s murderer to and from his home the night of January 11, is reportedly set to enter the government’s witness protection programme.

The Cyprus witness protection programme has been operational for the past twelve years.

“I believe this programme is successful,” said DISY deputy Ionas Nicolaou, chairman of the House Legal Affairs Committee.

According to Nicolaou, witnesses either stay in Cyprus or travel abroad and are provided money for one to two years to pay for living expenses and accommodation until they find employment.

COMMERCE & Tourism Minister Antonis Paschalides would “have no problem” taking a pay-cut “for the greater good” and to set a good example over public sector pay, he said yesterday.

Asked to comment on the package of public sector cutbacks – including pay-cuts for high earners – being prepared by Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis for announcement within the next two weeks, Paschalides said: “Of course, I have no problem. Not just we (senior public servants), but many other high-earners in Cyprus need to set a good example, and I would happily accept a pay-cut.”

MPs are routinely failing to turn up to committee meetings and plenary discussion sessions in adequate numbers, it emerged yesterday.

In some cases less than half the required number of MPs is turning up to weekly committee meetings, in which they discuss new legislation and present their constituents’ views.

George Perdikis, Green Party deputy, said yesterday: “At the Environmental Committee meeting, which happens every Thursday at noon, as few as four MPs are there at the start. By the time the meeting ends, it is sometimes just me and the Parliamentary President.”

While Environmental Committee meetings are generally among the least attended, the problem appears to be widespread, and even extends to the plenary.

DRIVERS IN the area covered by Nicosia Municipality will soon be able to reserve a parking-space in one of the capital’s public car-parks simply by sending a text message, or by logging on to a website.

Under a new system that is ready to be implemented in the near future, a driver will just have to send a text message with the area he/she wants to park in, together with the car registration number, to the four-digit number 2020 or 2030.

In return, he/she will immediately receive a text message containing the number of the parking space which will have been reserved for that particular car in one of the capital’s central public car-parks.

CYPRUS is in desperate need of a centre to care for patients with congential heart disease or one in every four sufferers could die, experts said yesterday.

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most common birth abnormality, affecting one in every 100 births.

In the past only 15 per cent of children born with CHD would survive but thanks to medical advances in the 20th century 90 per cent now live to adulthood.

However his means countries need to reconsider their medical facilities to deal with the problems encountered by CHD sufferers throughout the course of their lives, experts say.

The initiative and pressure to establish these facilities in Cyprus is coming from the patients themselves.

THERE ARE parties in both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities undermining the solution process, a delegation of members of the European Parliament High-Level Contact Group for Relations with the Turkish Cypriots found during its visit this week.

Libor Roucek, Coordinator of the group, told journalists at a news conference yesterday there was no

“magic solution”  for the negotiation process but said he believed the leaders were sincerely trying to get a successful, lasting solution.

“This is not easy because sometimes members of [the leaders’] own communities do not help them in the negotiating process,” he said, adding that parties in both communities “undermine the process.”

TWO LIMASSOL men were yesterday remanded in custody in connection with the murder of a 52-year-old man last December.

The two suspects, aged 26 and 29, were linked to the murder of Kyirakos Andreou in Limassol’s Turkish Cypriot refugee estate after ballistic tests matched a gun found during the investigation of a recent illegal antiquities case to the weapon used in Andreou’s murder.

According to reports the Berretta was found in the 26-year-old’s jeep. The 29-year-old was associated with the weapon following evidence that the younger suspect had instructed the 29-year-old to get rid of the gun.

THE PRESIDENT of the Association of Shopkeepers, Andreas Theodoulou, yesterday called on kiosk owners to withdraw of their own accord any stocks of so-called legal highs, which were banned by an executive order of the cabinet on Thursday.

“I believe that of our own accord we should withdraw these items.  Of course, they were not being sold at all kiosks but only at a few isolated ones,” he said.

On Thursday the Cabinet banned 17 substances and synthetic compounds used as constituent ingredients in cannabis substitutes sold in kiosks across Cyprus.

A 26-year-old Romanian was killed and four other men were slightly injured in a car crash late yesterday afternoon on the Paphos-Limassol highway.

According to initial police reports, Stefan Bartaz was one of five labourers – two Romanians and three Georgians – travelling in a pick-up truck towards Paphos when it collided with another vehicle that was being loaded onto a tow-truck near the village of Ayia Marinouda.

The pick-up truck flipped over after the impact, skidding some 20 metres along the road surface before coming to a halt. Fire Brigade officers who were called to the scene cut the five men free from the wreckage.