ANTONIS Fanieros, the Larnaca businessman guest at the Central Prison awaiting trial on a string of charges including extortion, arson and participation in a criminal organisation, wrote a rather moving letter to the comrade president about his predicament.
In his letter, published last Sunday in Politis, Fanieros addressed the comrade as “My beloved President”, which seemed a bit too familiar. This familiarity may be explained by their embracing the same political ideology. As Fanieros wrote, the informer who had stitched him up “belongs to the same political grouping as us”.
Fanieros expressed his “frustration but also the strong sense of injustice” he felt with regard to the “police’s attempt to ‘fabricate’ a case against me”. He also complained about the excessive publicity given to his arrest, something that was not done when dangerous people like rapists and drug traffickers were arrested.
He also pointed out the bizarre decision of the Chief of Police to urge people on radio and TV to come forward and give testimony against Fanieros. A resoundingly stupid move, even by Kyproulla standards, as it suggested there was insufficient evidence and the arrest was just another cop cock-up.
But Fanieros’ master-stroke was to bring up the 1974 coup, to remind his beloved president that he was not only on the side of the good guys, but was arrested for it. “In Cyprus there was a coup, they arrested us and humiliated us, but I never heard anyone asking on television and radio for people to go and give testimony,” he wrote.
This was very cheap treatment, by the authorities, of a coup-resistance fighter, who, from what we hear, gave an ultra-generous wedding gift to the daughter of his beloved president.
SPEAKING of cheapness, we read that that the head of DEFA (Natural Gas Public Company), Costas Ioannou has been refusing to return money to the state for holiday pay he received, but was not entitled to, when he was president of CERA (Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority).
Ioannou’s refusal to return the money was mentioned in the Auditor-general’s annual report that was released this week. On leaving CERA to take up his post as President of DEFA, which was secured for him by DIKO chief Marios Garoyian (he reportedly threatened to leave the government alliance in 2009 if the post did not go to Ioannou), he received holiday pay for 82 days, amounting to €30,492, instead of for the 54 which he was entitled to.
Interestingly, according to the Auditor-general, if the leave stipulated by the regulations – 20 days per annum – was taken into account Ioannou, on leaving CERA would have been entitled to payment for 35 days holiday and not 82. Rough estimates suggested he had to return about €10,000 to the state. CERA twice asked for the return of the money, the second time in August in writing, but Ioannou has been refusing to pay up.
He told one newspaper this week the decision to pay him 82 days leave was taken by CERA. But who was in charge of CERA at the time the decision to pay Ioannou more days of holiday than he was owed was taken? Ioannou, of course.
PARTY of high principle and even higher opportunism, DIKO has drafted a ridiculous bill which would give all authority for making deals for the importation, supply, trading and export of natural gas to DEFA, of which Garoyian’s loyal servant Ioannou is the executive chairman.
Ioannou was given a six-year contract, on an annual salary of about 80 grand, and since the government was blackmailed by DIKO into hiring him in 2009, has been doing nothing because no natural gas has been bought or supplied to our power stations.
He has written to the commerce minister a couple of times protesting about DEFA being marginalised but was ignored. He could have submitted his resignation and saved the taxpayer 80 grand a year, as he is being generously paid to do nothing, but this might be too much to expect from a guy refusing to return state money that he was not entitled to.
THE BILL, prepared by trusted Garoyian lieutenant Angelos Votsis, will make Ioannou’s employment more meaningful as it would take away many of the powers of the energy regulatory body CERA and limit the powers of the government so that the DIKO rep in charge of DEFA would have absolute powers in managing natural gas resources.
To safeguard DIKO’s proposed monopoly, the bill has a provision which prevents the government from replacing the DEFA board and its executive chairman Ioannou before their term expires at the end of 2015. Preventing the owner of a company – the state – from replacing its chief executive seems a bit totalitarian.
So even if the DEFA board signed a contract which gave all the revenue from the export of natural gas to Garoyian’s wife, the government would not be able to sack the executive chairman. If Ioannou decided that he had to be compensated for 300 days unpaid leave, again the government would not have the legal power to sack him, thanks to Votsis’ bill.
The bill is based on the assumption that Ioannou is a big expert on the exploitation of natural gas and should have the final say on what contracts should be signed and with whom. He was anointed a super-expert by his great and wise leader Garoyian, who also hopes to declare him infallible and irreplaceable by law.
Fortunately there is no chance such a bill would ever be approved by the legislature, because the other parties also want a piece of the natural gas lolly and would never agree to DIKO eating it all up. If we do not find any natural gas, the irreplaceable expert Ioannou could market Garoyian’s patriotic sermons that are very rich in unnatural gas.
STAYING on the subject of unnatural gas, the chauvinistic bullies in the legislature were left fuming after commerce minister Praxoulla Antoniadou refused to attend a meeting of the House Commerce committee on Friday.
The minister informed the committee chairman, Lefteris Christoforou, that she would not attend unless she received a written apology for the aggressive and hostile treatment she was subjected the last time she attended a committee meeting.
Christoforou described the minister’s snub “provocative and insulting”, as if such behaviour is the exclusive right of deputies. At the last meeting Prax attended, deputies behaved like a pack of hungry wolves, while DIKO deputy Koulias called her a ‘minister of commerce and of Turkey’, which was neither provocative nor insulting – it was fair comment.
THE COMMITTEE meeting would have discussed party efforts to deprive Prax of her executive powers and hand them over to the other natural gas expert, the head of the Energy Department, Solon Kassinis. A bill making Kassinis the superior of his minister was prepared by our good friend Averof, the DISY deputy, but has not been debated yet.
A clash between DISY and DIKO seems on the cards, with the former wanting the natural gas expert Kassinis to be the natural gas tsar and the latter rooting for the irreplaceable natural gas authority Ioannou. The camps agree on one thing – decisions on natural gas are too important to be left to a woman with ideas above her station.
FARMING unions have warned that there has been an invasion of Turkish tomatoes in recent weeks, even though there is no way of knowing that they are actually Muslim. The same complaint was made at about the same time last year.
Although the farmers have no proof, they are sure that the tomatoes are imported from Turkey, placed in boxes bearing Greek names and sold to unsuspecting consumers who would rather die than eat a Turkish tomato. The scandal does not end there. Ruthless traders of Turkish tomatoes also “supply the National Guard with Turkish produce, feeding our soldiers with the occupier’s produce”.
The Turkish tomato invasion has also had another undesirable effect. It has kept tomato
prices at reasonable levels for this time of year, during which the supply is limited and our patriotic farmers traditionally charge extortionate prices for their true-blue tomatoes.
ANOTHER argument used by the patriotic farmers was that Turkish Cypriot tomatoes were being grown on Greek Cypriot-owned land, which made them stolen goods.
Has anyone thought about the electricity that we are being supplied by the occupation regime? The power station, which has been supplying us with electricity since the summer, is built on land belonging to Greek Cypriots.
From what I hear the owners have already approached a lawyer who will take legal action against the Electricity Authority of Cyprus for buying power from a plant built on Greek Cypriot-owned land.
SOME customers have asked why we have not written anything about the municipal elections scheduled to be held next Sunday. The reason is that there is nothing to write. We have left it to other papers to write about what a wonderful candidate Constantinos Yiorkadjis is and how, as mayor, he would ensure a ‘Proud Lefkosia’.
Yiorkadjis, step-son of the late Ethnarch, wanted to enter politics and decided the easiest way was by becoming mayor of Nicosia. A spoilt rich kid, who always got what he wanted at Christmas, this year decided he wanted the Nicosia mayorship as his present, and all the political parties apart from AKEL have been trying to give it to him.
The guy has had no involvement in politics or public affairs but DIKO, DISY, EUROKO and EDEK concluded that he would make an excellent Zampelas of the capital. I suspect he would have preferred it if he was made mayor without making any public appearances, in which he seems rather uncomfortable, especially if he has to talk about a topic he has not rehearsed at home.
He is gradually becoming more comfortable in front of the camera and in a studio debate this week he showed that the election is really about the ‘ultra-proud Constantinos’, who will be devastated if Father Christmas fails to deliver the present he asked for.
THERE was some good news this week. Union bosses finally conceded defeat in their battle to defend the privileges of the public parasites. The threats of industrial action were forgotten when the miserable bosses met to discuss what to do. They all agreed on a token three-hour work stoppage on Tuesday and that was all.
It was a bit of a disappointment after all the threats they had made when the measures were being discussed, but it turned out that the union bosses’ calls for strikes did not have the support of their members. The miserable Hadjipetrou had to abandon the one-day strike he and the other ugly members of the PASYDY executive decided last Monday because many of the public parasites said they would go to work.
He found a face-saving solution, when Fanieros’ beloved president handed him a lifeline, by calling him to the palazzo on Tuesday to urge him not to stage a day’s strike on Thursday. He immediately agreed and this made the beloved comrade look good as well.
RETURNING to the municipal elections, Strovolos dog-owners will be happy to hear that Mayor Eliophotou publicly said that it was wrong to bar people from taking their dogs for walks on the path along the Pedieos river. He said people can ignore the signs and take their dogs on the path as long as they clean up after them.
And if there are any gloating, dog-owning voters they should back their mayor, Eleni Mavrou who, despite being an Akelite and failing to give us a Proud Lefkosia, has no dog restrictions anywhere in the capital.
