OUR AKELITE comrades may disagree, but the three-day House debate of the 2011 budget was by far the most entertaining and enjoyable I can remember. I am being disingenuous here because I cannot remember any previous budget debate, but this is probably because they were all more boring than death.
By tomorrow I will not be able to remember anything from the latest one either, but for now I can safely state that it had all the features of a memorable, fun event – passion, aggression, anger, animosity, mean-spiritedness, irreverence, silliness and no shortage of stupidity.
Only our brainy, high-brow comrades were disappointed as they were unable, despite their valiant efforts, to impose their own high intellectual and ethical standards on the proceedings. No matter how hard they tried to stop them – interrupting speeches, offering moral guidance and heckling – the “unacceptable personal attacks on the president of the Republic” continued with the same vicious intensity.
And all the moralising comrades could do was to shed buckets of tears about the “downgrading of political debate” and the “cheapening of politics”, which, according to commie deputy and PEO boss Bambis Kyritsis was “very dangerous”. Deputies who were denigrating the president, “ignored the danger that this behaviour could sink us all”, he warned.
Unfortunately nobody sunk, but this only slightly diminished our enjoyment of the 2010 budget debate. And we should be pleased about the cheapening of politics, because we would not have been able to afford them otherwise.
COMRADE Stavros Evagorou did his bit for upgrading the level of political debate, in responding to claims that we had a ‘special needs’ government. He wittily replied that, “until today I knew that the finance minister Charilaos Stavrakis was a graduate of Harvard and not of the Christos Stelios Ioannou School.” That was a pretty cheap shot, even by our very low standards.
The man considered by some as one of the serious AKEL deputies, also raised the level of the debate, in a way that would have been approved by his great leader when he told us how lucky we were to have comrade Tof as President.
“The economic crisis is a curse for people but for Cyprus it is a blessing that the crisis is being managed by government which has social sensitivities.” The real blessing would have been to have a president who knew a couple of things about running an economy, but I will say no more in case I am accused of lowering the level of political debate.
When the IMF comes in to sort out the mess made by the comrade’s ineptitude, I hope we get a special discount for his social sensitivities.
THE STAR of the debate was undoubtedly DIKO’S bash-patriotic, racist, midget, Zacharias Koulias, who came up with a great put-down. He told a do-gooder Akelite, who was defending illegal immigrants, the following:
“If Mrs Skevi wants to become the Mother Teresa of illegal immigrants, she should take all these foreigners and feed them.”
Zach, a right-wing bigot and demagogue of great intellectual shallowness, speaks with the absolute confidence of a poorly-educated person – the type who thinks he knows everything and is certain he is always right. He is also a bully, despite his size, but a very entertaining one.
Of course some people take the midget bully seriously. The Lazarus Patriotic Show, for instance, is such a big fan it broadcast most of Zach’s fiery speech the following day.
The other rising DIKO star is Stelios Ieronymides. One of his many followers sent out a text message to party members urging them to tune in to RIK 2 television station at 3.45pm to watch him speak. Those who did must have been disappointed. Ieronymides’ delivery was like that of an earnest school-kid reciting a boring speech on a celebration of national day.
Does he really think anyone wants to hear about DIKO’s responsible behaviour? A well-heeled Nicosia lawyer, Ieronymides could learn a few things about making a speech people would listen to from an unsophisticated peasant like Zach.
ON THURSDAY morning, the Speaker of the House and “man who could have any woman he wanted”, Marios Garoyian stopped chairing debate and was replaced by Dina Akelidou (no joke) for the remainder of the session.
The reason was that the comrade president had left for Brussels and Garoyian was acting president. But so what? Was he going to be running the country and could not carry on chairing the House debate? Does he go and sit in an office at the presidential palace and pretend to be president while playing computer games to pass the time?
The big affairs of state like rusfeti instructions and being socially sensitive, can wait until the president’s return. So what does Garoyian actually do as acting president? He was not even the guest of honour at the opening ceremony of the Anagennisis Dherynias Cultural Club on Thursday evening, the president being represented by one of his ministers.
So what does he do as acting president?
OUR SOCIALLY sensitive president did not waste much time in announcing that he would be wasting a bit more of the taxpayer’s money. Stung by criticism of his tax increases that would make the poor poorer, while still in Brussels on Friday, he announced that the government would pass relief measures to help the most vulnerable groups of our society.
This was music to the ears of our public parasites who were afraid that the seven per cent pay rises they would receive in 2011, would be absorbed by the tax hikes and not improve their standard of living. The relief measures would ensure a small increase in their standard of living.
ONLY IN Kyproulla could a university have an interim governing committee in place for eight years. The Open University has been run by the same interim governing committee for all that time, but its President, a certain Panos Razis, stubbornly refuses to step down despite calls to do so, this week, by the education minister.
The committee was appointed by the Clerides government and the conclusive proof of its monumental failure is the fact that after eight years it has still not been able to set up the structures for the Open University to operate as an autonomous entity. The interim governing committee of the Cyprus University, a much bigger operation, completed its job and dissolved itself, after less than three years, so what is taking Razis and his fellow committee members so long?
If they cannot do the job, they should have had the decency to resign long before now. But it seems that Razis is not even prepared to step down at the end of March 2011, when the term of the committee expires. According to the Education Minister Andreas Demetriou, Razis and his supporters on the committee were lobbying political parties, “begging them to extend the term” of the committee for a few more years.
A cynic would say that Razis is enjoying his stint as president of the Open University so much, he does not want to ever complete the job he was assigned. But as we all know bash-patriots like Razis are selfless. Underlining his refusal to resign he said: “The provisional committee will remain committed to the completion of its work and to the service of the country.”
And if it takes another 20 years to complete the job, he would be happy to make the sacrifice in the service of the country.
THE INTERIM committee consists of seven members, including Razis. Three of them have already submitted their resignations to the minister but Razis and the other three have refused to do so.
In the latest twist, Razis has reported the minister to the Attorney General for “illegally” interfering in the operation of the committee. The guy has no shame. He and his committee have proved total losers, unable to complete a job entrusted to them by the state eight years ago, but they want to carry on failing setting up the Open University.
Demetriou is absolutely correct to have lost patience with the committee, but everyone knows that if Razis was an Akelite nobody would have bothered him. In fact, the main reason the minister wants the current committee out is because his boss wants to put Akelite academics in charge of the Open University.
SPEAKING of academics, it would be nice to know which academic establishment regular bash-patriotic commentator on the Lazarus Patriotic Show, Costas Mavrides, works for. He is always introduced as an ‘academic’.
Earlier in the week, the academic was asked to comment on an opinion poll, conducted among Greek and Turkish Cypriots, regarding their views about what type of settlement they wanted. He told us that the opinion poll was funded by UNDP which was probably funded by the US and suggested that its findings should be viewed with suspicion as they suited the interests of those who wanted to impose an unfair settlement. It was a very academic analysis indeed.
By this academic logic, we should view with suspicion an opinion poll about the Cyprob, paid for by Sigma TV, because it would reflect the station’s anti-solution views.
WAS THIS the same Costas Mavrides who had been commissioned to carry out an investigation into the stock exchange bubble by the legislature and in his findings said that people who had taken out investment loans to play the market were not legally obliged to pay them back?
It later transpired that he was not the most objective person to make such an academic suggestion as he also had taken out an investment loan which he was refusing to pay back. This experience entitled him to attribute ulterior motives to people conducting opinion polls.
UNION BOSSES only have to shout ‘boo’ for the comrade to stand to attention and await their orders. We saw this again on Monday, when all the union bosses gathered, supposedly to discuss ‘dynamic’ measures they would take in protest against the government tax hikes. The meeting would have taken place in the afternoon but in the morning the comrade sent our former friend Charilaos, to meet the bosses of PEO, SEK and PASYDY.
Charilaos promised the union bullies that he would re-submit the bills for taxing the rich, use the revenue for relief measures for low income groups and prevent the bill rationalising the pension system, which the public parasites were vehemently opposed to. ‘Responsibility prevailed’ read AKEL mouthpiece, Haravghi’s banner headline the next day, reporting the news that the union bosses had decided to call off action.
Who would not act responsibly when they are given everything they are demanding? Even public parasite boss Hadjiklamouris acts responsibly when the president obeys his orders.
THE Coffeeshop will be closed for the next two weeks as there will be no Sunday Mail. We are not complaining as we will not have to write any heart-warming stories in keeping with the Christmas spirit. We wish our readers a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year, (if they are public parasites) and an affordable new year to everyone else.
