Tales from the Coffeeshop:Ambitions of a totalitarian, teetotaller

WE HAVE entered the slow season, the time of year we poor piss-artists (or should I say piss-poor artists) have to work twice as hard to prepare a column, and with the risk of not getting a single libel suit as recognition of our dedication to our ignoble duties, in the sweltering August heat.
The legislature has closed down, the black anniversaries of the twin crimes against Cyprus are over, the politicians have gone abroad, DIKO is having yet another inconclusive crisis meeting and the union bosses are in their Protaras holiday homes with the rest of the have-nots of our unfair society.
Even the morning, current affairs, radio shows are finding it difficult to come up with news topics and have been playing songs in order to fill time. Yesterday, Trito’s morning show went as far as to feature chat about the government crisis in Italy, which would have been unheard of a month ago.
We could feature foreign news, but unfortunately we cannot fill space by having musical breaks like the radio shows. We considered including the lyrics of a couple of songs to fill space, but eventually decided against it.

THE OTHER option was to follow the TV example and re-run last week’s Coffeeshop, with an (R) at the top to indicate that it was a repeat. CyBC TV did it on Monday, repeating the comrade president’s two hours-plus interview with Costas Yennaris, just a week after it was first broadcast.
I would really like to know who took the decision to repeat this TV gold. Had hundreds of viewers called the corporation demanding a re-run because they had missed it? Was it the idea of general manager Themis Themistocleous, whose contract is up for renewal soon? While the comrade responds very positively to all forms of flattery, Themis would surely never stoop so low for personal interest.
The rumours suggest the repeat was ordered by the palazzo, so the comrade’s mum, who had missed it, could get a chance to watch her boy’s tour de force.

I READ with great interest in last Sunday’s Politis, that Coffeeshop hero, Ttooulis of Avgorou, a former finance/interior minister, former Governor of the Central Bank, former Mother Teresa and all-time bash-patriot, is considering standing in the 2013 presidential elections as the Church’s candidate.
According to the report, the mega-ambitious Ttooulis announced his intention at a family gathering, at his brother’s house in Avgorou, which was quite sweet as it illustrated his pure, village values.
Villages have been the setting for many historic decisions that shaped the future of Kyproulla, and Ttooulis, who has always been proud of his birthplace, recognised the importance of starting his heroic journey from there. In three years time we may be talking about the historic Avgorou meeting and crying.

TTOOULIS issued a statement the next day saying the content of the report “is untrue and betrays the anxiety and insecurity of its writer.” Can he blame him? The prospect of Ttooulis totalitarianism would make any sane person anxious and insecure as emigration would be the only option.
The scary thing is that although the report was untrue, he did not deny that the presidency was an ambition. “The issue of the presidential elections is not among my priorities and has not pre-occupied me,” he said, refusing to rule out the possibility of being a candidate.
The Politis report said Archbishop Chrys 2, who had bank-rolled Ttooulis’ pitifully poor book about the economics of a solution and gave it out free at the churches, was ready to back his candidacy. The report added that Chryssie wanted to put together an anti-federation alliance of DIKO, EDEK, EUROKO and Perdikis to back the former Mother Teresa’s candidacy.
The last time the Church forged a presidential election alliance between DIKO and EDEK, in 1993 – for the sake of a more hard-line stance on the Cyprob – its reluctant candidate was annihilated. Ttooulis might not be a reluctant candidate, but he has never contested an election in his life. He was always appointed to his posts, thanks to his talent for flattery and sucking up to the guy in power.
I suspect it is this talent that persuaded Chryssie to consider a professional placeman, who will be 74 in 2013, as candidate of the ecclesiastical, bash-patriotic front. Our only hope now is for the comrade to sign a federal agreement with the Turks before 2013. I thought I’d never say this but a second term of the comrade would be better than a theocratic regime under the totalitarian, teetotaller Ttooulis.

HIS CANDIDACY would command the full support of the private television station the bosses of which are on very friendly terms with the Church’s chosen one. During his Mother Teresa phase, when as interior minister he would give out taxpayer’s money to impoverished and unfortunate individuals, the Antenna film crew was always present to record these heart-rending acts of charity.
Station boss Loukis P is a close friend while the Zeus group regularly offers its media as vehicles for Ttooulis to get across his heroic, bash-patriotic messages. He regularly has his fire and brimstone articles published in Simerini and is a frequent guest on the Lazarus morning radio show. Mega is church-controlled.
If he does stand it would be a good test of the alleged Antenna curse – the presidential candidates the station backed in the last two elections did not make it to the second round.

THE SUCCESSOR of Ttooulis at the Central Bank, Athanasios Orphanides gave a news conference on Monday during which he turned on the pressure on the government over its failure to cut public spending. Without immediate action the budget deficit would get worse and the necessary remedial measures much more painful, he said.
Everyone, apart from the government and the unions, agreed with him. However, a skettos-drinking customer of our establishment made a very good point about the Governor’s gripes. “Instead of constantly moaning about the government’s failure to cut spending, why does he not set an example by cutting the wages and pensions of the Central Bank employees, which are the highest in the country?
“The average cost to the state of a Central Bank employee is close to €100,000 a year and they get even higher pensions than CyTA employees. It is a bit cheap for the highest paid state official in the country to demand pay cuts every time he talks in public, without offering to reduce his own fat salary.”

THERE is another way Orphanides could contribute towards reducing the budget deficit. He could cut down on his trips abroad. His annual foreign travel expenses, according to a finance ministry source, are even higher than Foreign Minister Marcos Kyprianou’s who is a compulsive traveller. I find this very hard to believe as I think it humanly impossible to travel as much as the foreign minister.
And Marcos always takes his personal bodyguard with him – thus boosting his travel costs – not because his life is in danger, but because he needs someone to carry his suitcase. The foreign minister of Kyproulla cannot be seen at the airport carrying his own suitcase as it would undermine the status of the Republic he serves.
We are still waiting to hear how much, our top state officials’ travels have cost the taxpayer. DIKO deputy Zacharias Koulias sent a letter to the Accountant-general seeking information about the costs of foreign travel of the comrade, Marcos and other big-wigs in the last two years, but has yet to receive a reply.
The Accountant-general fobbed him off on the grounds he did not follow the correct procedure, but Koulias re-submitted his request.

AS THE MEETING of the DIKO executive office continued into the early hours of yesterday and the shop was completed on Friday night we do not know what it decided. In fact we do not even know why it was called.
I suspect Marios Garoyian wanted the party to declare his decision to fly to Mykonos with his wife, for a short break, on the ann
iversary of the coup, as an act of supreme patriotism that Chrysanthos Tsouroulis had no right to criticise in his blog because he was bringing down the level of political life.
Meanwhile the holier than thou, Tsouroulis, after getting a bit of stick in the press, about his pious outburst against the DIKO chief, wrote a letter to Politis preaching about the “obligation” of journalists to “express opinions, analyse events to judge and criticise the behaviour of people holding public posts”. It was just another sermon, this time about what constitutes correct journalistic behaviour, according to the saintly one.

I CAN’T wait to read what he has to say about the rusfeti row which broke out this week and sparked an orgy of cheap moralising by everyone. Even the Akelites, who were conducting the rusfeti, were beating their breasts about it, because theirs was not as bad as the rsufeti of the DISY government.
Politicians getting their knickers in twist because the government was engaging in rusfeti is like a bunch of hookers (or should I say sex-workers) protesting that a colleague was having sex for money. And there is a better chance of taking the hookers’ protests more seriously than the politicians’.

BIG AL appears to have caught the Kyproulla bug of reading Cyprob significance into every event that takes place. When he uttered his heart-warming message, on leaving the dinner given at chez Eroglu, calling on us to “take some heart from the positive atmosphere”, we all assumed that he may have had drop too much to drink.
But we were wrong, because the next day, he was still waxing lyrical about the “truly Cypriot occasion” and expressing his admiration for the way the two leaders, their wives, their representatives were “talking about Cyprus in ways that only Cypriots can talk about their own island and sharing such a passion and love of their own island.”
That was not all. “I came away from the dinner thinking that these people can work together, they can solve the Cyprus problem.” They can also dress up like women and attend a transvestites’ disco, but I doubt they ever will.

THE slow season for news is the time when the super-hacks show off their superior talents. This is the period when Washington-based correspondent Michalis Ignatiou proves he is a cut above the rest.
His report, published in Thursday’s Phil, about the “thousands of documents relating to Cyprus and Greece which a group of Washington-based researchers succeeded in securing and declassifying” would have been a big journalistic coup, if it said anything about the contents of the documents.
It did not, even though Ig informed us that “the second package of documents included telegrams from the US embassy in Nicosia about the Cyprus presidential elections of 2008. In these, the Americans show a very big interest in AKEL’s decision to go against Tassos Papadopoulos…” This is what Ignatiou, not the documents, said.
I will stop there because, unlike the Americans, I do not have a very big interest in AKEL’s decision. I will wait until Ignatiou publishes his book with all the information. Incidentally, we hear that his eagerly awaited book about the referendum bribery ‘scandal’ has still not been given the go-ahead for publication by his lawyer, who has been allegedly checking the manuscript for libellous references for the last three years. If I were Ignatiou I would have hired another lawyer, by now – one who can read a bit faster.
AND NOW for a musical break.