WHO COULD have imagined that Eurocypria would have been unceremoniously declared closed and 320 workers thrown out on the street, without warning, under the people-centred, caring government of comrade Tof, the self-proclaimed guardian saint of the proletariat?
We thought that only ruthless, greedy capitalists who put profit above human values treated workers in such a despicable way. We thought state-owned companies did not behave like private businesses, especially when they are run by a government that proudly embraces socialist ideals.
Are Tof and his comrades closet neo-liberals, too embarrassed to admit it, or just typically incompetent socialists with a special talent for bad management? I think we all know the answer to that. The real tragedy of the Eurocypria fiasco was that it made a mockery of a big AKELite myth – state ownership was good because it offered job security to workers.
We won’t be hearing that one again. Another myth that collapsed was that the Tof government knows what it is doing and has everything under control. We’ll hear that one again, but nobody will buy it, not even if it offered as a bargain of the week by Lidl.
THE FATHER of the proletariat was in for the shock of his life on Friday as he stepped out of his flash limo at the Chamber of Commerce building, ahead of President Assad junior’s visit. Demonstrating Eurocypria workers, who were across the road, started chanting abuse at him for making them unemployed. It was a quality moment.
On Friday evening hacks with mikes were waiting for him as he arrived at a gallery in Limassol for the opening of an exhibition. He was obviously not too keen to answer questions about the airline’s bankruptcy, ticking off a hack who used the actual word. He referred to the bankruptcy as ‘a situation’.
He also passed the buck, informing stunned hacks that he could not really talk about Eurocypria because “it is not my competency”. How foolish we were to think that the president might take any responsibility for the bankruptcy of a state company. It was solely the fault of Charilaos, who took all decisions without ever consulting his boss.
The comrade has the (in)competency for a much bigger government project to have had the time to bankrupt Eurocypria. Together with his union advisors he has taken on the much bigger responsibility of bankrupting the state.
A WORD of sympathy for our former good friend Charilaos (we hope he understands that we had to cut our ties of friendship because we do not want Eurocypria workers demonstrating outside our establishment and throwing red paint on our walls), who looked a broken man when he was announcing the EU decision.
He looked like he was on the verge of breaking down and crying in front of the cameras, but eventually he recovered enough to put a positive spin on one answer. Talk of Eurocypria having debts of €50 million was an exaggeration he said. They were probably closer to 49 million.
Our former good friend, like his boss, made out that he was blameless. He did not see what was coming and had not expected the EU to block the merger and prevent Cyprus Airways from hiring all the Eurocypria staff. The bankruptcy was quite clearly the fault of the EU and the decision was part of an Anglo-American conspiracy, aimed at breaking our resistance and imposing an unfair settlement.
THE ONLY person to have come out of this mess looking good was DISY’s deputy fuhrer Averof Neophytou, who has been forecasting Eurocypria’s bankruptcy at huge expense to the taxpayer ever since our former friend tricked the legislature into approving €35 million for the airline.
Averof had said from the beginning that the money would be wasted and that before long the airline would need another cash injection to survive. He was proved right. So when Averof says that the economy is going to the dogs, we should take note and ignore the reassurances of the government which gets everything wrong, despite being run by an infallible president.
Eurocypria may have been closed down, but the taxpayer is certain to be served with more bills. All the politicians are now demanding that the workers are compensated by the state. If each worker receives 50 grand, the cost to the taxpayer would be in excess of €16m; add to this other financial commitments guaranteed by the state and Charilaos would need to save a lot more than €150 million to meet next year’s budget deficit target.
COMMERCE, Industry and Tourism minister Antonis Paschalides was so totally blameless that he protested he had heard about Eurocypria’s closure from the media. He had been kept in the dark by his colleagues, which was quite convenient as he did not have to take any responsibility for what had happened.
He was not that concerned though to call the finance ministry and ask what was happening. On Friday after arrangements were made for Cyprus Airways to take passengers that were booked to fly with Eurocypria, Paschalides rounded on the critics who had accused the ministry of not having a plan of action. He also bragged about how he had sorted out the problem, now that he was in the picture.
You got the impression that if Paschalides had been told on time about Eurocypria’s woes he would have saved the airline as well.
THE WORD from Brussels is that Turkey’s chief negotiator Egemen Bagis did not actually say all the provocative things about the Republic that our brave, female Euro-warriors attributed to him.
Courageous, bash-patriotic Antigone the Kanoni and Eleni Theocharous made a big fuss and walked out of the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee meeting in protest. They claimed Bagis had referred to Cyprus as “a country in the south (of the island) that we do not recognise, and do not know if it is a state.”
According to the minutes of the meeting, Bagis had said: “Yes, Turkey has diplomatic relations with the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus but we also observe although we do not recognise, we observe the presence of another state in the southern part of the island.”
So all the fuss was down to our MEPs completely misunderstanding what Bagis had said and not checking the translation, before starting beating their breasts and advertising their mega-bravery in walking out of the meeting on the Kyproulla radio shows. The ultra-brave, Euro-warrior Theocharous wrote a letter doubting the impartiality of the committee’s chairperson and demanding her replacement.
With such nutcases representing us in Brussels, is it any wonder that everyone is siding with the Turks?
BUT WHY do we expect our MEPs to behave rationally when this cheap bravery, always exercised with vacuous words, is the main currency of our political system?
This week that other brave mouth warrior, Marios Garoyian turned on his guest the Turkish President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Mevlut Cavusoglu, who was here on a three-day visit.
The bash-patriotic media was outraged because Cavusoglu visited Dervis Eroglu in his office and stayed in the north for one night. This was a cue for Garoyian to turn on the bash-patriotic rhetoric, accusing Cavusoglu of misleading the Cyprus authorities and claiming he had stayed at a hotel that was built on Greek Cypriot land.
In a show of astonishing courage, the freedom-warrior Garoyian refused to accompany his guest to the airport for his departure as punishment. Everyone in Cyprus knew that Cavusoglu would have visited the north – it was announced before he arrived here – but it seems Garoyian cannot pass any opportunity to publicise his bravery and bash-patriotism, even if it shows him up as the lousiest host in the world.
SPEAKING about the Eurocypria fiasco, Garoyian urged the authorities to help the workers and not resort to “words devoid of content”. He is not smart enough to recognise the irony of his impassioned plea. Nobody utters more “words devoid of content” than the former personality of the year – not even Dr Faustus. The guy is the joke of the diplomatic community for his ability to talk forever without saying anything with content.
THE DOWNER documents, which according to Phil uncovered “the conspiracy against the Greek Cypriots”, also provided a golden opportunity for deputies to show off their verbal bravery. But bash-patriotic deputies suffered a setback on Thursday after DISY and AKEL deputies voted against the discussion of the emails at the House Institutions Committee.
This gave Rikkos, Marinos and others the opportunity to rail against the unpatriotic big parties, which voted for a postponement until after the comrade’s meeting with UN Secretary-General in New York. The UN had written to the government complaining that discussion of the emails at the legislature constituted violation of a long list of agreements the Republic was party to regarding diplomatic privilege and privacy.
But who cares about respecting diplomatic conventions when we are threatened by a UN conspiracy and the only way to defeat it is by our deputies firing their brave words at Big Bad Al, at a legislature committee meeting.
EVERYONE must have heard of Giorgos Giorgis, aka Kolokouthkias. Giorgis, an accomplished networker known to pander to anyone with money or power, managed to get appointed ambassador to Greece during the reign of the Ethnarch, who did not suffer fools. Now he is back in Kyproulla, the self-regarding Giorgis has managed to get himself appointed to the board of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Centre. He has been using his new post exercising censorship on publications that are sponsored by the Centre. He vetoed articles by two writers he does not like from being published in the sponsored publication. The publisher, fearing the bank would withdraw its sponsorship, gave in to this sad loser who the B of C informed us had no authority to censor or veto writers.
HEALTH minister Christos Patsalides staged a pretty PR event in the week that the Paraskevaideon Kidney Transplant Centre closed down, because he decided to withdraw state funding for ego reasons. Pats met the AKEL chief Andros Kyprianou, who gave him a list with the names of 200 AKEL members that wanted to be organ donors. News reports did not mention what organs the altruistic AKELites would be offering, but given Pats’ ambitious plans for the State Transplant Centre, it could be livers, hearts, eyes, brains etc.
Our establishment will be issuing cards that people, who do not want an organ from an AKELite donor would have to carry with them at all times, because some of us believe that life would not be worth living with the brain or a pancreas of an AKELite.
SOME 20 dogs were poisoned during the start of the hunting season last Sunday as villagers put down poison in fields. It was reported that the poison used was not Lanate which posed a big problem – dog-owners have an antidote for Lanate but not for the unknown poisons being used. The big question was how did the dog killers get their hands on the new poisons? Phil of course had the answer – they had been brought over from the occupied territories. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Downer team was bringing it over having extended its conspiracy to against Greek Cypriot dogs as well.
