“There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi information minister declared in April 2003 just hours before Iraqi troops fell to US forces.
Were those infamous words, and others like them, uttered by that peerless master of spin, Comical Ali a.k.a. Baghdad Bob, a testament to propaganda-gone-overboard, or an exercise in self-delusion? A bit of both perhaps. Whichever way you see it, it encapsulates a state of being out of touch with reality.
What’s all this got to do with us, you ask. Well, closer to home, it feels like someone else has declared open season on common sense.
Lately, President Demetris Christofias’ rhetoric has grown more and more puzzling, his behaviour increasingly erratic.
Some samples:
August 19: “There is an international – allow me to say – conspiracy which is called ‘the markets’. These so-called markets are the highway robbers of the world.”
Mid-October: “To defend CoLA [Cost of Living Allowance], I am prepared to take to the streets and demonstrate with the workers.”
October 31: “We are in continuous deliberations to ask the troika to come to Cyprus. This is what it has come to.”
December 9: “I tell you only this: I am being hounded because I do not tolerate rousfeti [nepotism].”
December 13: “We were stabbed in the back by different quarters of the [European] Union – allegations of money laundering, allegations that we were a paradise for Russian oligarchs, allegations that we would use the loan to protect the Russians and much more, all of which were blows below the belt.”
All the above postdate the Christofias’ administration request for EU/IMF assistance to bail Cyprus out. Now, normally someone going hat in hand for a loan would not be expected to bad-mouth his potential creditors every chance he gets. Yet that’s precisely what the president has been doing – particularly when he feels cosy among a friendly (usually left-wing) audience.
At the end of the day, aren’t these ‘highway robbers of the world’ and EU ‘quarters’ the ones who are going to save our skin? And as for the lamentation ‘This is what it has come to’, one could reasonably retort: “But aren’t you in charge, Mr President? Isn’t it under your watch that it has come to this?”
What can we make of these assertions? Does the president really believe what he’s saying? And, does he himself realise what he’s saying?
For answers, the Sunday Mail turned to experts in the psychoanalytical profession. The verdict: yes, Christofias genuinely believes what he says.
“That’s what makes him dangerous,” comments clinical psychologist Vassilis Christodoulou. To him, the president displays signs of narcissism, layered with a firmly rooted belief in his own infallibility.
“With Christofias, it’s always someone else’s fault. Right now, it’s the bankers, the capitalist system … everyone is to blame for the economic crisis but him or his government. And he truly believes that, it’s not just propaganda. That’s what so disturbing.”
Listening to the president’s utterances and looking at the body language, Christodoulou has come to the conclusion that Christofias is “in a state of confusion, panic even, which leads to him to commit gaffe after gaffe. If you watch closely during his public appearances, he often cringes, as if he’s carrying all the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s clearly in defensive mode.”
The analyst elaborates: “Remember how he always complains that his adversaries are out to undermine him, out to get him? That’s because he believes he is beyond criticism. He cannot grasp the concept that, having been elected to office, people still have the right to take swipes at him.
“In other words, he thinks he’s right, and it’s the rest of us who don’t understand him. He displays unmistakeable traits of narcissism – which all politicians suffer from to some extent. But with Christofias, it’s to the superlative degree.
“It’s like: the other kids don’t wanna play with me.”
And Christodoulou isn’t kidding either: “Christofias has what I would call an almost childish outlook. In part, it has to do with his political background. Coming from AKEL, where criticism and thinking out of the box are not encouraged, he has been cocooned and schooled in this creed, that the party can’t be wrong.”
He believes there are instances where the president’s behaviour borders on the paranoid.
“How else to explain that he threatened to demonstrate against the troika, whom he invited here in the first place? My guess is he doesn’t really comprehend what’s happening in Cyprus.”
As a case in point, Christodoulou cites the president’s teary outburst while addressing the PEO congress on December 5. Christofias broke down, and took a few seconds to wipe away tears with a handkerchief, sniffling some more and blowing his nose. The president lost it while declaring: “My concern and priority has always been for the good of the workers, of the common people. I assure you that I shall continue to fight for these values to my last breath.”
Christodoulou says: “What you can take away from this is that Christofias feels he was forced into this situation; that he was forced, through no fault of his own, to take these unpopular austerity measures.”
Psychologist/sociologist Antonis Raftis takes the analysis a step further: “Guilty conscience,” he states unequivocally.
“In that moment, Christofias felt like he was betraying the common people by saddling them with all these taxes and cutbacks. He knows it’s the lower-income classes who will suffer the most. But also, it was the stress getting to him.”
Raftis offers his psychological profile of the head of state: soft-hearted, very possessive, a control freak, and last but not least stubborn.
“It’s an unstable cocktail,” he says.
Another factor is the president’s fear of responsibility. That ties in perfectly with Christofias’ tendency to shift attention elsewhere, lest he become the target.
Raftis again: “Austerity? Blame the troika. The crisis? Blame the global credit squeeze and the bankers in Cyprus. But who was it who appointed one banker after another to the post of finance minister? And then you blame the banks for the mess.”
The pattern goes all the way back to the Mari disaster: “Before the [civilian] probe came out, Christofias said he would accept it. After it came out, he rejected it because it made him look bad.”
Moreover, Christofias is said to be politically naive: “You see him kissing everyone on the cheek…Talat, Sarkozy, Merkel. It’s as if he thinks that the personal touch will earn him the trust of foreign leaders. But it doesn’t work like that, of course.”
It’s this naiveté that has generated a series of verbal bloopers, as the president strives to be endearing, only to end up being misunderstood – partly due to his poor command of English, and partly because he doesn’t understand that some Cypriot idioms – especially some – are not to be translated literally.
Raftis suspects that fear of rejection played a big part in Christofias’ decision not to run for re-election.
“He couldn’t handle a defeat.”
Other top quotes
“I felt like the cheated husband who is the last to know.”
“Even though I studied in Moscow, I made one moon in England.”
“I thanks (sic) the Prime Minister of Denmark, for the pass he makes to me… like Messi.”
“I am very embittered. You have a president who is sensitive.”
“Christofias is a tough nut to crack, and anyone who tries to swallow [destroy] him will break his teeth.”
“We leave, proud of our services to the Cypriot people. The government has managed to safeguard the rights and conquests of working people as well as issues relating to the s
overeignty of the state during discussions with the troika.”
“So as you know, 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 visions of Cyprus.”
