YOU CAN always trust our illustrious politicians to come up with ingenious ways of tackling the problems facing the country. And for the biggest crisis facing Kyproulla, the answer is the creation of a national unity government or failing that a government of broader acceptance.
It is really quite simple. The comrade president will sack a few ministers, replace them with individuals who do not belong to DIKO and AKEL and his cabinet will suddenly be transformed into a group of world-beaters that would provide rational solutions to the mountain of problems he has created.
The theory ignores one important, unchanging factor. The broad-based government would still be led by the same despotic president whose dismally poor judgment put us in this mess in the first place.
If he does go for the joke of the broader-based government (national unity government has been pooh-poohed by DISY) he would probably get rid of the very few competent ministers he has and keep the deadweights and yes-men.
The other question is what capable, high-achieving, intelligent individual would leave a good job to become a minister in the worst government in the history of the Republic and be associated with the tyranny of the incompetents that brought destruction and destitution to the country?
Only a no-hope loser would take up a ministerial post in the Tof government and include such a distinction in his CV.
THE TYRANNY of the incompetents has lived up to all our worst expectations and even now that the economy is set to blow up like the containers at Mari, it still will not let us down.
At Friday’s national council for the economy, the comrade put up a big fight to limit the measures that would be adopted, especially those that would provoke the anger of the parasites’ union boss Glafcos Hadjiklamouris.
New taxes would also be introduced in the hope that our union bosses would consent to the other measures. Of course there is no guarantee that they would give their consent, without which our wise leader has said, no measures would be adopted. During the meeting he worked hard to defend the privileges of the parasites, opposing any suggestion that would reduce those privileges.
He repeatedly lost his temper and shouted at participants for daring to propose the necessary tough measures. At one point the DISY representatives threatened to walk out, refusing to rubber-stamp the drop in the ocean measures agreed by AKEL and DIKO before the Vassilikos power station had been obliterated.
In the end, to avoid the walk-out, he resorted to his favourite tactic – postponement of decision-making. He agreed to have another meeting this week.
DURING Friday’s meeting he did not only have a slanging match with DISY’s deputy leader Averof Neophytou, but he also attacked his own people. When AKEL chief Andros Kyprianou dared to agree with a suggestion made by one of the participants, Tof told him off in front of everyone. ‘Did you secure the approval of the AKEL collective organs for supporting such a proposal?’ the nasty comrade asked the hapless Andros.
He also told off our friend Charilaos, who had avoided expressing any opinions during the meeting for fear of saying anything that would anger his leader. Even when he was challenged to say what he thought of reasonable proposals that were made, he avoided taking a position. But he was still not spared his boss’ reprimand.
When someone pointed out that we would not meet the target of a deficit of 2 per cent of GDP in 2012 without tougher measures, the despotic comrade started shouting at Charilaos, asking him ‘who told you to set a target of 2 per cent?’ Our friend said nothing, showing he would suffer any humiliation in order to be go down in history as the minister who turned Kyproulla into Albania.
THE ARROGANCE of the clueless comrade is another frightening reminder of the way his tyranny of the incompetents, which includes several union bosses, operates. There may have been small explosions in the containers of the economy over the last year or so, but it would rather be faced with the consequences of a massive blast rather than incur the wrath of Hadjiklamouris by slightly reducing the blood-sucking by his public parasites.
As for the comrade, the only logical reason for offering protection to the state bloodsuckers would be if he sought re-election and wanted their votes. He must be dangerously delusional if he still believes that re-election is an option. With his blunder record the guy would be unable to be elected mukhtar of Pervolia.
SPEAKING to the DISY political bureau, Fuhrer Nice Nik said the possibility of privatising semi-governmental organisations should also be considered as a way of helping the economy. Of course for the comrade and AKEL, privatisation has always been out of the question ideologically (they want a big, money-wasting state) and practically (it would reduce their rusfeti potential), arguing that we must not sell off national wealth. Nik’s take was that while some said we should not sell off the national wealth they blew it up instead.
EFFORTS to get some money out of the EU – described a few weeks ago by our wise leader as ‘not a group of angels’ – are not going very well. EU Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn was here on Thursday and visited the Vassilikos disaster zone to see for himself our government’s demolition job.
Hahn said we may be able to get something from the structural funds available as we were probably not eligible to apply for solidarity funds which are exclusively for natural disasters. We could of course submit our application for solidarity funds anyway arguing that the election of the comrade president was the natural disaster.
THE DEMOS outside the palazzo de poppolo did not stop our delusional leader having his annual gathering to condemn the coup and the invasion. The country is going downhill, our future is looking as bleak as Greece’s and the head of the lunatic asylum is making speeches about what happened 37 years ago.
Before his tedious speech, a short documentary was shown on a big screen featuring film clips of the visits to Kyproulla of Chancellor Merkel, President Medvedev and the Pope. It might not have had anything to do with the coup and the Turkish invasion but it was shown to remind the Akelite proles of the leader’s greatness.
THOUSANDS of cops were recruited to maintain law and order during the twin demonstrations at the palazzo. They would stop people, several hundred yards from the palazzo and ask them the question, ‘Inside or outside?’ There were different routes for the two sets of demonstrators.
The cops did a good job because there were no incidents apart from some shouting of abuse and the hurling of plastic water bottles. CyBC hack Costas Constantinou was reporting live from outside the palazzo and was asked by the presenter in the studio if there had been any trouble. As soon as he said that there had been trouble, the demonstrators started shouting that he was telling lies and he immediately stopped talking.
This was nothing compared to a week earlier when the cops fired tear-gas at the demonstrators. The CyBC reporter on the scene was Stella Michael, who at one point called the presenter of a discussion show and was totally hysterical. She was crying and coughing on air, repeating the words, ‘the police are unacceptable’. The presenter eventually cut her off.
It was another case of great journalism ‘with the seriousness and authoritativeness of the people of Rik’.
WE WERE saddened to hear on Monday that our minister of foreign travel Marcos Kyprianou had decided to submit his resignation, for reasons of ‘political sensitivity’. He also felt that he was being used as a ‘scapegoat’ for the Mari blast by the government.
Despite the efforts of the comrade to dissuade him, the following day, Marcos stuck to his decision choosing to join the swelling ranks of the unemployed rather than continue to be part of the tyranny of the incompetents. Marcos had his presidential ambitions to safeguard, which was why he sensitively sacrificed the ministerial dolce vita.
Then again he did not have much right to get moralistic about the presidential palace trying to shift blame for the blast to him. The day after the blast he had arranged to be interviewed on the main CyBC TV news during which he went out of his way to wash his hands of the killer blast and distance himself from the government.
Two days later, minutes of a broad meeting he had chaired were leaked to the press. The meeting discussed the Mari containers, but no decision was taken. This forced the potential scapegoat to announce that he would accept the portion responsibility that was due to him, before his sensitivity got the better of him and he resigned.
BY RESIGNING Marcos is following in the foot-steps of his late, great father Spy, who resigned as foreign minister from the Makarios government. The alleged reason for his resignation was that the Greek junta did not want him, but I find that hard to believe, as Spy was too smart to have caused offence to the colonels.
Marcos made quite a sacrifice, as this will be the first time since 2003 he will be without a chauffeur-driven company limo, a bodyguard, a huge expense allowance and high status. Would he be able to cope with such a sudden diminishing of his status and the abrupt termination of his world travels? An aristocrat like Marcos cannot possibly go back to being a lawyer, working for living and driving his own car after eight years having people doing everything for him.
He could find a role for himself at DIKO – the deputy leader’s post is vacant – but the post offers no salary, no car, no chauffeur and no foreign travel.
WE DID not hear any of our heroic anti-Annan plan campaigners praising or congratulating Turkish prime minister Erdogan for declaring that we should forget the hated A-plan. Instead they attacked him for his ‘provocative and inflammatory’ comments which betrayed Ankara’s ‘partitionist plans’ for Cyprus.
Opposition to the A-plan and preference for partition is exactly what the Archbishop and his political followers have been advocating for years without anyone accusing them of being provocative. With Erdogan embracing their positions, we must be very close to a solution that we have been praying for all these years.
DIKO, the party of principles and ideals, issued a statement after Erdogan’s comments saying that “Ankara’s partitionist plans against Cyprus cannot be fought with verbose comments and rhetorical reactions”. This assertion was followed by the familiar rhetoric about ending the occupation and restoring liberty and human rights.
And there was another rhetorical reaction, a few hours later, when a second statement was issued and contained even more verbose comments. DIKO hoped that “Erdogan’s inflammatory comments would provoke a mass, popular reaction and the mobilisation of all the political forces of the country, which would be the start of a new national beginning, based on an assertive strategy and tactics that would confront with decisiveness and effectiveness Turkish objectives.”
WE LEARNT another thing this week. We cannot rely on the Turks to help us with our power supply problems. After four days of supplying us with electricity something happened to their power station and the supply to our grid was drastically reduced. Now the guys who can just about run a conventional power station are talking about setting up a nuclear power station in the north. The Turks might argue that there is no risk as comrade Tof would never be in charge of the occupied area, but they underestimate their own proven record for cock-ups.
