WHERE had Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides been hiding all this time? Such ministerial talent should be better utilised by the government, in these depressing, recession-ravaged times, when everyone needs a little light relief.
Paschalides provided it by the bucketload in last Monday when he announced his bold decision to protect the consumers by imposing a cap on petrol prices. Anyone who heard him using the French word plafond, may have been fooled into thinking that this was a serious measure, until the actual details were made known
He issued a ministerial order that would reduce the price of petrol per litre by one cent, which was emphatically, conclusive proof that the stations were not profiteering as he had claimed. His measure, which would save a car-owner who needed 50 litres to fill his car 50 cents, did not benefit too many people as most petrol stations closed down in protest against the plafond.
The saving was wasted by driving around looking for an open station to fill up. And if we put a cost to the 40-minutes wait to get the car filled at one of the few open stations we ended up paying a lot more for a litre of petrol than we did before Paschalides imposed his tres jolie plafond.
FOR THE first two days of the plafond, Paschalides, who looks a bit like a Pontian who’s been to secondary school, acted and talked tough, championing the rights of consumers and warning petrol station owners “not to push their luck,” because he would take additional measures.
By Wednesday, when newspapers started questioning his pathetic decision and people were moaning about the inconvenience caused by the closure of the stations, the brave defender of the consumers lost his bravado and stopped making public statements.
I hear the comrade had hit the plafond when he heard about Paschalides’ decision. He gave him a presidential bollocking because POVEK, to which most petrol station owners belong and took the decision to close the stations, is an AKEL satellite organisation.
Paschalides reached a deal with the petrol station operators on Thursday afternoon, his plafond stayed in place for the rest of the day and was withdrawn on Friday. “Today we feel that a battle has been won on behalf of the consumer,” he declared.
Thanks to the victory, the consumer would be able to buy petrol at exactly the same price he was paying before the battle was won by the fearless minister.
ALL HAIL the charismatic Marios Garoyian, personality of the year, House president, DIKO leader, king of horse-trading and the true heir of Spy Kyp. Our prayers may have helped a bit, but we should take nothing away from Marios’ finest hour.
Last Tuesday he took on the patriotic lawyers of his party and inflicted a humbling defeat on them, showing that bash-patriotism was a fringe tendency within DIKO. The overwhelming majority of the Central Committee embraced his hard-line opportunism and voted against the easy option of leaving the government tent.
Marios’ analysis of why he had proposed for DIKO to stay in the government alliance, proved beyond doubt that he is the new Spy Kyp. Here it is:
“There are two roads: the easy road, in which you are on the outside throwing stones, disagreeing and criticising and the difficult road which we chose. The road of dignity, the road of assertiveness and improvement of things across the board – the national issue, the economy and broader.
“My position was shaped after much thought, questioning and taking into account the interest of the country and society.”
The difficult road, the road of dignity and assertiveness also includes a second term as House president for Garoyian, half a dozen ministries for DIKO, a host of chairmanship in state organisations and unlimited scope for low-level rusfeti.
And if the experience of the last two years is anything to go by, DIKO can carry on throwing stones, disagreeing and criticising, while remaining on the difficult road chosen by Spy Kyp II.
A MINISTER that could make the blood-sucking parasites in charge of PASYDY seem like reasonable and socially responsible human beings is in the wrong job. It pains me to say this but our good friend Charilaos, will now have this unenviable achievement on his record, through no real fault of his own.
The leadership of the parasites’ union wrote a letter to the finance ministry complaining about government plans to open four, new, top-paid, senior management positions at the health and communications ministries. How could the finance minister claim that the civil service was overstaffed, declare a freeze on new appointments and then open new positions asked the PASYDY boss, and he was right.
It is a weird way to reduce the public sector payroll, but it was not Charilaos’ idea. He was obviously following orders from his comrade president who wanted to create a few more well-paid jobs for Akelites. He might give one of them to DIKO now that it decided to take hard road and stay in the government.
Despite the latest self-inflicted embarrassment, we are happy to note that Charilaos has not lost his talent for positive spin. He told Politis that a letter responding to PASYDY had been written by finance ministry officials, but it would not be sent because the government did not want to open a front with the union.
He did not mention the possibility of the letter being leaked and everyone having a good laugh at the reasons defending the decision.
THE LAWYERS, who also work as politicians, may be highly-principled, public-spirited individuals when they are talking about the big national issues, but when it comes to protecting their financial interests they are in the same category as used car salesmen and property developers.
A member of a consumer association spoke about the selflessness of lawyer/deputies on a radio show last week. He said that bill for the setting up of an arbitration service for resolving disputes between consumers and suppliers of goods or services had been gathering dust in the House since 2005. The service would work as an alternative to the courts, offering quick settlements after examining complaints about faulty goods, exorbitant charges, etc.
The bill, which is still awaiting approval, had one provision removed by deputies. The arbitration service would not be able to examine complaints against law offices for over-charging clients. Deputies considered the provision unnecessary, on the grounds that it was a violation of lawyers’ human right to rip off their clients.
LAST TUESDAY, in a police announcement, it was reported that there had been arson at a mosque in Kofinou. In the evening a cop called this paper and asked a journalist to ignore the mosque arson story, as it would be harmful to report it.
The hack being a hack asked the cop, what harm it would cause and the cop being a cop gave him a diatribe about the national interest. The story could create the impression there was religious intolerance and hostility towards Muslims.
And it would be the wrong impression as the suspect in the arson case was a known, teenage troublemaker, who had no political agenda, but was into mindless destruction, the cop explained. All other newspapers had helpfully agreed not run the story.
The hack being a hack, tried to intellectualise the matter telling the cop that this was form of censorship and that police had no right to decide what stories were fit to publish. The cop being a cop, did not understand the high-brow analysis, but admitted that the police realised the ‘arson attack on mosque’ story would be harmful only after it was put in the communiqué.
Next time, the police would simply not include stories that are bad for Cyprus in their communiqués, rather than have to explain themselves to patronising hacks, with their lofty ideas about freedom of information.
THE COPS should not be so sensitive, because there is no religious intolerance here. Everyone is wetting themselves over the Pope’s scheduled visit in June, even though we of the Greek Orthodox faith are supposed to hate Roman Catholics more than we hate Muslims.
Unfortunately, many of us appear to have forgotten the Fourth Crusade organised by the Papacy which culminated in the savage sacking of Constantinopole in April 1204, the Latin crusaders looting, raping, massacring and desecrating the greatest Church of Christendom. The Papacy apologised 800 years later, an apology that was formally accepted by the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Larnaca and Paphos have definitely forgotten about the Fourth Crusade and have been bickering over which airport Pope Benedict’s will arrive at, on June 4. The plan is that he would arrive in Paphos and leave from Larnaca, but Larnaca authorities have been sneakily trying to change this and have pushed for the completion of the luxury VIP lounge at Larnaca airport before June so they could strengthen their case.
We hope Larnaca wins the landing rights for the Pontiff, because those uncouth, aggressive, Paphos taxi-drivers who operate a closed shop at the airport may cause an embarrassing incident. They might not let him leave the airport in a state limo, insisting one of them gets the fare.
COMRADE President, despite being an atheist commie, is a great fan of the Pope. He has visited the Vatican twice – once as House president and last year as head of state. According to Haravghi editor Androulla Gurov, “we will be honoured by the visit of the Pontiff who maintains excellent relations with the President.”
How or why, she did not explain. I would have speculated it was because they both made claims to infallibility, but our man, in a show of false modesty, publicly gave up this claim three weeks ago.
‘SOLUTION in 1977’ was the banner headline of Simerini on February 26, 1977; the old front page was published in last Friday’s edition.
The prediction was credited to Clark Clifford, the US President’s special envoy to Cyprus, who was quoted as saying, “there is a definite possibility of solving the Cyprus problem within 1977.” How times have changed.
Nowadays, no diplomat would dare use the adjective ‘definite’ in relation to the prospects of a settlement, no matter how ‘cautiously optimistic’ they might be. If Clark said the same thing today, Simerini’s headline would have been, ‘Americans rushing to close Cyprus problem.’
ALL IS NOT WELL for the students of our top educational establishment, the University of Cyprus. A survey conducted in January among 1,545 students found that the most important problem faced by the majority (57 per cent) was the shortage of parking space at the university.
The 43 per cent who did not see this as a major problem probably did not own a car. For 56 per cent the high prices of textbooks were an important problem. I think we could easily boast that we have the world’s most spoilt university students, more in need of good spanking than a free education.
They pay no tuition fees, they are given an annual grant by the state and they complain about having to pay high prices for textbooks, even though 57 per cent of them can afford to have a car.
Meanwhile, an academic who often has a skettos in our establishment informed us that there was ample parking space at the university, but the disgustingly spoilt kids – the bright future of our society – objected to the hardship of having to walk for five to 10 minutes to get to their classes. The kids will have to be patient and hope that the university authorities will one day introduce drive-in lectures.
