HAPPY birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Kyproulla, Happy birthday to you. From good friends and true, from old friends and new, May good luck go with you, And bi-zonal, bi-communal federation too.
This specially-adapted song is our small contribution to the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Republic. Nigeria has exactly the same birthday as us but its Friday celebrations (they also had a military parade) ended in tragedy as car bombs placed in the capital by a separatist group killed eight people. The explosions, news agencies reported, led to the cancellation of President Goodluck Jonathan’s national address.
We were fortunate that our celebrations were not marred by violence and tragedy, and unfortunate as this meant that President Badluck Demetris did not have to cancel any of his scheduled national addresses. He addressed us on Thursday, made a speech after the military parade on Friday and addressed us again at the evening’s celebratory event.
Nigeria is not the only country which shares the same national day as Kyproulla. October 1 is a national holiday in China, which celebrates the establishment of the People’s Republic; on Friday China marked the 61st anniversary of the communist republic.
We do not celebrate the establishment of the People’s Republic of Kyproulla yet, but if we ever do the public holiday would be on February 28, the day the comrade assumed power and embarked on the noble project of building an even fairer society for the public parasites who have been sucking our blood for 50 years.
THESE are the people who should be celebrating because the Republic has been very kind to them, giving them whopping salaries, retirement bonuses and super-pensions, not to mention social status and highly-paid jobs for their kids.
Politicians, civil servants, workers and directors of semi-state organisations are the shareholders of the Republic and have been lawfully plundering it for 50 years. But we did not see them out on the streets dancing and singing on Friday as a small token of their gratitude for the wealth and social standing lavished on them and their families by the Republic during its 50-year existence.
Instead, on Thursday night it was the plebs who took the trouble to go to the palazzo de popolo and shake hands with the comrade president and Mrs Tofias on the occasion of the anniversary. The event was as intimate as a wedding reception, with long queues of proletarians and villagers, dressed in their Sunday-best, waiting patiently to shake hands with the glowing first couple, before heading to the palazzo garden for drinks.
No small envelopes were handed to the presidential couple.
A TRUE SON of the Republic was seen in action on Thursday evening at the main entrance of the Hilton Hotel. A flash, chauffeur-driven BMW arrived and out climbed the elderly Christodoulos Veniamin, a man who had served as interior minister under the first three presidents of the Republic and subsequently as an AKEL deputy.
The chauffeur, who is presumably paid by the taxpayer, asked the cop on duty where he could park Mr Veniamin’s car, close to the entrance, because it was inconceivable for a loyal servant of the Republic to have to pay to park his car. Veniamin’s last spell as minister ended in 1993 but as a shareholder of the Republic he still has the right to park his car where the rest of us are forbidden to.
THE MILITARY parade was given a retro touch this year with a platoon of soldiers marching in the uniforms worn when the National Guard was first established in 1964. They also carried the guns of the time (Brens, Stens etc) and wore those fruit-bowl type helmets that the British wore in WWII.
Star of the parade, for those who watched it on the telly, was the CyBC’s commentator who was having multiple orgasms observing our warriors marching. His recital in patriotic, morale-boosting clichés was from the heart and stole show.
“When the infantry advance, everyone advances and the people are rightly applauding…. Our national pride is kindled by the parading civil guards…. and now the legendary LOK (commandos) an imposing presence. People are enthusiastically applauding LOK who are putting on a fantastic performance, with impeccable precision in movement and perfect co-ordination… the frogmen are in a position to undertake the most dangerous missions in sea and air… to succeed you need mental resilience and strength.”
WHEN THE mechanised units were parading the CyBC’s commentator begun sounding like a salesman for tank manufacturers. The T80 battle tanks were among the best and most up-to-date in the world he declared before he informed us about their ability to negotiate any terrain, self-load and fire shells while moving, intercept hostile shells, hit targets in the pitch dark and clean the house when the maid is on holiday.
“Applaud their able operators and feel pride because at last we are certain about the defence of this country,” he advised as he neared climax. He could no longer hold back when the sexy BMP3 armoured personnel carriers appeared. “Feel pride because you can be certain that in the hands of our soldiers they are our spears as well as our shield.”
The armoured vehicles, he explained, “are the main colleagues of the tanks on the battlefield. These, in combination with the unrivalled in power and capabilities, battle tanks constitute an impregnable barrier and constitute a guarantee and hope for a better tomorrow.” Are the tanks going to reduce the budget deficit and stop inflation?
NEWSPAPERS were all expecting to receive pictures from the opening of the Cyprus exhibition at the famous Smithsonian National Museum of Natural Science in Washington. The comrade president opened the exhibition which marked 50 years of diplomatic relations, friendship and co-operation between the imperialist, capitalist US and its victim Kyproulla.
However no photos were made available by the Public Information Office. The reason – the photograph files were too big. Repeated attempts to send the pictures of the Smithsonian opening caused the PIO server to crash.
THE FAILURE to send the pictures was indicative of the kind of week the comrade was having. A day earlier he had made his ill-fated speech at the Brookings Institution which sparked four-days of mass hysteria and collective breast-beating on the island. He had said that in 1974 the “the two so-called mainlands, in fact, invaded both.”
He and his spokesmen ended up spending what should have been days of celebration defending his equating of the junta-engineered coup with the Turkish invasion. It was difficult to understand why everyone got so angry given that, in English, what he said made no sense at all. In fact the entire speech made little sense as our leader’s command of English seems very basic. Thanks to his colossal self-belief and arrogance he felt he could deliver an off-the-cuff speech in a language he started to learn only a couple of years ago. Take the following excerpt of his speech:
“Cyprus is a very, very beautiful island. A whole island. But unfortunately, let me say it’s been raped and we have to restore the virgins of Cyprus.” He did not tell his audience how he planned to restore “the virgins of Cyprus.” The Brookings transcript had the word ‘visions’ instead of ‘virgins’, which makes no sense either, but listening to the audio it sure sounds like he was going to restore the virgins.
HIS DECLARATION of love for the Turkish Cypriots, which should have sparked greater hysteria among his countrymen was noticed by no-one. He said: “I love the Turkey Cypriots. These are not words. I lived in a village which was surrounded by Turkey Cypriots villages. My father was builder of houses. Very often he worked together with Turkey Cypriots. I had this opportunity to be together with Turkey Cypriots. They are Cypriots or they are not human beings the Greek Cypriots.”
This last sentence needs a bit of explaining but I would dare such an undertaking as my English is not good enough.
NOBODY doubts the Turk-loving tendencies of the British military, which seem to be cultivated at officer training academies. The latest man to illustrate the point is the former military attaché at the British High Commission, Colonel John Lemon, who retired recently. Readers might not remember this but Colonel Lemon turned up at the memorial event honouring British servicemen who died during the Eoka struggle, held at the Kyrenia cemetery, in full uniform, to show his disdain for the Republic. Now that he has retired the colonel has also bought a house in Kyrenia. He probably insisted that the house he bought was built on Greek Cypriot land.
BEING A young republic, we never had any royalty but there is one family that has been treated like royalty by everyone – the family of the late businessman Gogos Paraskevaides. The media have always shown an incredible level of deference to the mega-wealthy Paraskevaides clan. Last Sunday however, Politis broke with tradition and carried a full-page report about the family feuding. Apparently it has been split into two, with an outsider – the partner of one of the Paraskevaides daughters – taking all the decisions about the family fortune. Not a single paper or television station picked up the report, even though everyone would have enjoyed reading about the Republic’s wealthiest family bickering over their millions.
I DO NOT own an i-Phone and seeing its effects on middle-aged men who do, I doubt I will ever buy one. This gadget turns men into crushing bores, as anyone who has been cornered by an i-phone owner at a social occasion would testify.
They are so obsessed with their i-phone they have no other topic of conversation or interest. It as if their mind has been programmed by Apple to work as its salesmen without pay. In fact, I doubt Apple salesmen could ever do as hard a sell of the product as the i-Phone zealots one meets socially.
First they praise the touch-system that is so easy to use and then they will start waxing lyrical about the millions of free applications that you can download. After 10 minutes of this sales pitch you start wondering how a previously normal, well-adjusted person, could turn into such an i-bore.
The i-bores who bought their love object in the Republic are not being treated very nicely by suppliers. One person was recently made to pay €40 to have dust removed from under the touch-screen by the supplier even though the i-phone was under guarantee. The guarantee did not cover damage caused by dust which is a bit weird in our dust bowl of a country.
But the seller’s warranty form is quite amazing. It states that the guarantee does not cover “batteries, speakers, microphones, ringers, screens, moving wires, aerials, chargers and memory cards.” A briefer way of saying this would have been ‘our guarantee covers nothing’.
THE HEALTH ministry announced this week that it would put together an internal audit team to check that policies were being implemented and correct procedures followed; the team would also oversee the operation of state hospitals. The team will not scrutinise the minister’s decisions regarding the sending of patients for treatment abroad as he has absolute power on the matter and is accountable to nobody.
AT THE Immigration Department, one official was overheard telling another to put all the green files on top of the pending pile. “These are the applications by the Russians and they are only immigrants who have money,” he told his new colleague.
