IF YOU ARE expecting to get a scholarly, in-depth analysis of the content of the catastrophic joint declaration which envisages the evolution of the patticha republic into a mespilo republic, you will not be disappointed.
Our select team of metrios drinkers, some posing as constitutional experts and others as law professors in tweed jackets, has studied every word and phrase as well as the position of every comma and full-stop in the declaration to provide our customers with accurate explanations about the three singles, zero couples, constituent states and the significance of residual powers.
Initially, the Coffeeshop’s experts did not see any risk of a ‘virgin birth’ in the declaration, although Ethnarch Junior and his soulmate Yiorkos Lillikas identified the danger immediately. So they went bank to the text and after hours of meticulous study they realised that Junior and Yiorkos were right to be worried.
With only three singles (citizenship, sovereignty and international personality) and no couples included in the document, it was inevitable that the new federal state would result from an immaculate conception. Had there been at least one couple, they could have produced the new federal state in the conventional way and nobody could complain about a ‘virgin birth’, which is not such a bad thing.
In fact, as Christians we should be proud that the new Kyproulla state would result from a virgin birth because the last time this happened was a little over 2,000 years ago and it produced the Messiah. This could explain the cunning Archbishop Chrys’ unexpected support for the declaration.
YOU’D think half our political leaders were the products of virgin births the way they have all seized the role of Messiah determined to save us from the biblical catastrophe of a settlement.
The leading Messiah of the last couple of weeks has been Ethnarch Junior, who is taking his role very seriously indeed. Junior has upheld his proud family tradition, flying the flag of negativity and alarmism, not only for the good of the country but also as a way of posting his ‘great leader’ credentials.
Junior was particularly vicious and mean-spirited in his attacks on poor old Prez Nik, whom he accused of lying during his Wednesday evening news conference and also labelled a liar – a bit rich coming from the son of Tassos, a legendary liar compared to whom Nik, or any other politician, would be minor league.
Junior apparently is very anxious and worried about the residual powers going to the constituent states in the event of a settlement. Our constitutional experts agree that it would have been much better to pickle the residual powers and put them in a jar in the freezer but believe we could get round the problem by saying they were not residual but came about from a virgin birth.
THE BIG question is why DIKO remains in the government alliance headed by a ‘liar’ who knows nothing other than to make big concessions to the Turks. Why are the proud and principled people of DIKO lending their support to a prez who has treacherously agreed that the federal constitution’s residual powers would be exercised by the constituent states?
What is Junior waiting for to do the right thing? When does he plan to take his four ministers and leave the government? If he does not leave he would create the mistaken impression that DIKO is more interested in enjoying the spoils of power than saving the country. And when he leaves he should tell all the DIKO losers he appointed chairmen of SGOs, like his smiling koumbaros Giorgos Pipis, to step down as well.
Junior fears he may face a revolt if he took such a course of action. Already, one DIKO deputy, Athina Kyriakidou, announced that she would support Prez Nik’s effort to secure a settlement. As for his ministers they tried to do a deal with Nik ahead of Thursday’s Council of Ministers’ meeting to lock their posts.
Thursday’s cabinet meeting was scheduled to vote for the SGO privatisation bill, which, a day earlier, Junior had decided DIKO was against. In theory, the four DIKO ministers would have voted against it but instead they tried to do a deal with Nik. They offered to vote in favour of the bill, if he promised to keep them in their ministerial posts even if DIKO left the government.
Nice Nik refused to make such a promise, advising the fearsome foursome to abstain in the vote, which they did, thus keeping Junior happy but, sadly, failing to secure their ministerial futures – a good development for the country.
IT IS obvious that Junior is eyeing the presidency. His mum made her husband president, one son a mayor and now wants her second son to follow his father. She wants to go down in history as the only woman who was both the wife and the mother of president of the Republic.
A settlement of the Cyprob would put paid to her noble plans because Junior would be associated with the ancient regime and nobody would trust a guy who invested so much in maintaining partition and hostility between the two communities as president of the constituent or federal state. DIKO without the Cyprob would only have rusfeti to offer.
Junior would appear to be in a lose-lose situation, because nobody has won presidential elections by taking a stand against a settlement. Even his dad had to pretend that he was pro-solution – he pledged to work for a settlement based on the Annan plan – to get elected. And he lost spectacularly when he tried to get re-elected, because more than two-thirds of the population wanted a prez who would work for a settlement.
THE PAPHOS Messiah Yiorkos Lillikas, who has mega presidential ambitions, should also have realised this but it is too late to go back now. In the last 11 years he has been a bash-patriotic, anti-solution, freedom fighter that would make Turkey regret the day she invaded Kyrpoulla so it is difficult to change now.
Yiorkos, who is also losing sleep over the residual powers and the virgin birth, needs the Cyprob to be kept going so that he can justify his political existence and carry on his Messianic role. And if there are presidential elections with the Cyprob still open he could always promise that he would work for a settlement, because he never tells the truth anyway.
COUNT DRACULA lookalike Marinos Sizopoulos of EDEK is the most irritating of the new Messiahs. His cartoon self-righteousness and fanatical insistence that his party’s positions on the Cyprob have been vindicated are a joy to behold.
Now if his party’s positions led to the withdrawal of the occupation troops or the return of territory he would have every right to talk about vindication. Opposing peace talks as a matter of principle in the hope that the problem would be solved by divine intervention is neither clever nor brave; nor does it deserve our congratulations as Sizopoulos seems to think.
This skin-deep analysis is what you would expect from a skin doctor, who is currently telling anyone who would listen that the Cyprob could be solved justly and fairly at an international conference. All we had to do was send out the invitations to the participants and promise them there would be plenty of loose women at the hotel.
WHAT were the criteria for inviting hacks to Prez Nik’s news conference on Wednesday night? Every nobody who had a website or a blog was invited to ask questions. Yet our favourite website Show Biz.cy was quite scandalously ignored.
You could not even understand half the names as they were uttered by the government spokesman. I was wondering whether there was a ‘film-news’ website or I was going deaf. There was one called ‘I-Kypros,’ a ‘Thema-online,’ and best of all ‘Lemitomos.com’ (lemitomos means guillotine), which was represented by a blonde.
The bloggers and website owners did not all ask stupid questions – they were so honoured to have been invited they were pretty polite. In fact the stupidest question – will we have to be taught Turkish in our schools in the event of a settlement – was put by a hack from a television station. The second stupidest – will the solution pass through Kyrenia? – was not given the answer it deserved – ‘yes, but it will not be stopping there’.
SO FAREWELL Big Bad Al, you decided to do a runner just when talks were about to resume and the weather was perfect for a round of golf. There had been rumours of your imminent departure for a couple of months, but we had thought it had just been speculation based on our wishful thinking.
We were wrong as this week your boss Ban Ki-moon officially announced you’re stepping down. We still do not know if you jumped or you were pushed. What we do know is that your departure proved correct the oft-repeated saying that ‘Cyprus is a graveside for international diplomats and goldmine for international lawyers.’
The international lawyers are already here milking the Cyprob cow. Prez Nik mentioned two that are currently helping our side – Crawford and Lowe – while Junior cited the findings of one of them. So farewell Al, and harsh as it might seem, I suspect that you will not be missed.
VETERAN Simerini columnist Costakis Antoniou has written a lot of crap in his career but Friday’s article lambasting prez Nik was one of his best. He wrote: “Congratulations to the Anastasiades government for its assertiveness. It opened the door of privatisation to pillars of national security (what do we need national security now that the solution is coming) and at the same time he opened the doors of hell for families that will lose their house. Just like he gave everything to the Turks, in the same way he granted everything to the Troika. It is in his DNA to surrender, with or without a pistol on his temple.”
WHAT is it with all our presidents that they feel obliged to pay a visit to the Pope? The Ethnarch and his entourage visited the Vatican, comrade Tof visited a couple of times and now Prez Nik. If we were a Catholic country I could understand our head of state wanting to be photographed with the Pope, but we are a Greek Orthodox country that does not recognise Papal supremacy.
Prez Nik and entourage were seen by Pope Francis yesterday. From what we have learned, he had a very good reason for requesting – he wanted to ask the Pontiff to bless the imminent, virgin birth of the new republic.
