I KNOW it is very embarrassing to admit this, but comrade Tof’s appearance before the golden oldies committee on Thursday was manna from heaven for our establishment in another very slow week for news. It is nothing to be proud of but it has to be said that the village idiot is our muse and today’s shop is devoted to him and his comrades.
The creative juices started flowing from the moment he strutted into the conference centre on Thursday morning accompanied by three bodyguards. Disappointingly there was nobody outside the centre waiting for him and shouting abuse or throwing eggs at him. All the fun and entertainment took place inside.
We should have suspected things would not go smoothly when it was reported that most of the big-wig members of the AKEL politburo, led by the comrade chief Andros, had turned up for the hearing and taken all the front seats. Evagorou, Kats, Stef-Stef, Koukouma, Damianou, Sotiroulla, Sillykiotis plus some unidentifiable party members, whom you knew were commies from their plebeian looks, were all there.
The presence of the AKEL circus was interpreted as a show of party solidarity and support for Kyproulla’s worst-ever president but, as subsequent events showed, the motives behind the big turnout were rather more sinister than many of us had naively thought.
THE BIG-WIG comrades were at the hearing in the front row to intimidate and terrorise the panel of judges. They knew that Tof would demand a change of the investigative committee’s procedure and calculated that their mass presence would frighten the timid geriatrics on the panel into agreeing.
This intimidation method was used by the mafia and other crime syndicates when one of their own was in court facing criminal charges. They knew that when the judge and jury saw their mean, nasty and threatening faces – they did not need to speak – the possibility of a guilty verdict would be eliminated.
AKEL’s leading lights hoped they would have a similar effect on the panel when Tof attempted to impose the procedure of his choice. If the three judges refused to play ball, they would face the concerted, verbal attacks of the AKEL propaganda machinery, which would seize every opportunity to rubbish their integrity, honesty and fairness.
This is exactly what has been happening since the geriatrics’ committee rejected the condition that Tof set – he would read his 50-page statement and any questions the panel had he would respond to in writing in the future – for participating in the hearing.
AFTER Tof’s walkout from the hearing AKEL’s bully-in-chief Giorgos Loucaides said: “What little credibility and regard that the investigating committee enjoyed was completely shattered after its unacceptable decision to gag the former president”.
The “incomprehensible and unjustified refusal of the committee to allow the president to read his statement constitutes the climax of a chain of events and omissions on its part, which show bias, expediency, lack of objectivity and mainly a pre-determined outcome.”
He reminded us of “loaded questions” and “selective choice of witnesses” which had turned the investigation into “a parody”. None of the people supporting the bankers and the hated former Central Bank Governor were invited before the biased committee he said, implying there was a conspiracy against the Left.
On Friday, Tof’s comrade legal advisors, one of whom is AKEL deputy Aristos Damianou, reported a conflict of interest as one of the members of the panel was related (sympetheros) to a legal advisor of the Bank of Cyprus.
At night Stef Stef appeared on a TV station to declare that day’s appearance before the committee of former Governor Athanasios Orphanides was “stage-managed and the questions loaded”. Orph was scheduled to appear after Tof so he could answer everything the comrade would say, the suspicious Stef-Stef said.
It was obviously all an anti-Tof, anti-AKEL conspiracy run by biased, dishonest, corrupt judges (remember the sympetheros) who did not even allow the innocent village idiot the right to defend himself in order to prove his indisputable innocence in this mockery of an investigation.
THE GERIATRIC judges, who have been receiving mixed reviews, had the guts to stand up to the communist intimidation tactics. Not only did they reject Tof’s attempt to dictate the committee’s procedure they also issued a scathing statement censuring his behaviour and reported his refusal to co-operate to the Attorney General.
In a surreal exchange during the hearing, Tof argued that if he were allowed to read his statement it would have provided all the answers to the questions the panel would have asked. President of the committee and Cyprob aficionado, Giorgos
Pikis asked how he was so sure when he did not know what questions would be asked.
The smart comrade responded by asking Pikis how he knew the questions would not be answered if he had not read his statement. Pikis obviously had not heard about the village idiot’s omniscience and his psychic powers.
THE 50-PAGE statement was a pretty impressively researched document and a fine work of propaganda that showed the very “bias, expediency, omissions and lack of objectivity” Loucaides accused the committee of.
And of course its selective information and arguments led to the pre-determined outcome of the comrade’s total innocence and blamelessness for the economic collapse. In 50 pages of dense text there is not even an oblique reference or a hint that the man in charge of the country when it went down the drain may have committed an error of judgment or made a bad decision.
Everything was the fault of others while he heroically defended social cohesion and the interests of the poor workers against the cruelty of neo-liberal economic remedies. In fact the first five pages of the statement was a diatribe about the world economic crisis and the failure of capitalism, because as a good Marxist Tof had to place his incompetence and stupidity within its proper social and economic context.
The statement said that “economic crises are a component of the capitalist system, which is based on the exploitation of human labour and natural resources and has as its objective profit for those who own capital and the means of production.” This was the answer to the fifth question Pikis would have asked at the hearing if Tof stayed.
I LOVE the way Akelites re-invent the truth. After Tof walked out of the committee refusing to answer any questions, which was the plan all along, he held a news conference at which the first thing he said was: “I did not refuse to answer any questions.”
And then he blamed someone else for what had happened. “The refusal was by the president of the committee to let me read out my written statement.” His Akelite minions also insisted that Tof had not refused to answer questions because he told the committee that he would prepare his answers in writing and send them back at a later date.
But would it be the comrade answering the questions in such a case or the same AKEL apparatchiks that wrote his 50-page statement? And what would be the point of appearing before the committee if someone else would be answering the questions he would have been asked? So literally speaking he did refuse to answer the questions.
Akelites were being trained to lie convincingly in the Soviet Union’s communist schools. Tof did not seek different treatment, his spokesmen lied. He had only demanded that a completely different procedure from the one followed for everyone else was adopted by the committee for his sake. The reason – “I am not just any witness.”
ONE OF the reasons he gave for not answering the questions of the committee was “I am not an economist”, implying that he was in no position to give answers regarding the economy. What a shame that he did not exhibit the same self-awareness of his limitations in the five years he was our all-knowing president.
For five years he was blocking decisions being taken by his finance ministers who were all economists and knew much more than him about how to deal with a failing economy. He also ignored the advice of the economists of the European Commission who advised him to take specific measures in order to protect the economy.
It never crossed his mind back then that he was not an economist and that it might have been a good idea to heed the advice of those who were. When he was president he was a top economist as well with a specialisation in bankruptcy economics that is based on the exploitation of human stupidity and has as its objective the destruction of a whole country.
THE COMMITTEE of investigation, the lawyers of the comrade declared on Friday, was illegal because it had been appointed by the Council of Ministers. It should have been appointed by the attorney-general and not the cabinet, because prez Nik was also under investigation, the Tof lawyers said.
Nik had demanded that the committee investigate him as well and he is due to appear before it on Tuesday, as the last witness.
But there was another problem according to the comrade’s smart-ass lawyers. The Council of Ministers that appointed the committee illegally cannot legally withdraw the appointment. So we are stuck with an illegal committee that nobody can dissolve because it would be illegal to do so.
Of course, as it is illegal, the comrade had done nothing illegal in not refusing to answer its questions and not demanding preferential treatment.
WE WOULD like to close with the serious warning issued by the comrade just before he started reading his statement on Thursday. “If we start committing the terrible mistake of putting policies and politicians on trial, this will lead our society into the abyss. This will be the tombstone of democracy.”
Our society did not make this terrible mistake. Instead it allowed an incompetent, clueless, deluded fool, posing as a politician, to take catastrophically disastrous decisions without putting him on trial but was still led to the abyss. Democracy survived but it proved the tombstone of the economy and the country. I suppose we have to be grateful for what he did for us.
