WHAT CAN you say on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that has not already been said? Could anything be written that would not be utterly tedious, boring and clichéd and not come across as a send-up?
I could write that we will continue our unyielding struggle for the liberation of every single village in the occupied area and the return of all refugees to their homes, but customers would think I had a screw loose.
Not even our courageously defiant politicians make such statements nowadays, preferring to talk about a fair and just settlement that would be achieved with a minimum of struggle and preferably without the need of negotiations with the intransigent Turks who, in contrast to us, have never been consumed by the burning desire for a settlement.
The Turks might pretend they want a settlement but their real objective is partition along the current dividing line which they have achieved without our politicians noticing because they had been too busy putting up a brave resistance to the Turkish designs and thwarting Anglo-American plots to impose suffocating time-frame on talks.
MEANWHILE our illustrious party leaders decided to mark the 40th anniversary of the invasion by putting together a new strategy for the liberation of the occupied parts. Monday’s National Council meeting agreed that all the leaders would submit proposals for a new strategy when they meet again in September.
What new strategy these slogan salesmen will come up with is anyone’s guess, but I suspect they would agree on the re-branding and re-marketing of the Cyprob as an issue of invasion and occupation rather than as a bi-communal dispute, because this would help our unyielding struggle to go on for a few more years.
An even more radical strategy change would be for Prez Nik to put in a request to the UN Security Council to stop negotiating for settlement with the Turks and choose another country. For instance, we could negotiate for solution with the Maltese who are much more reasonable chaps than the Turks and are unlikely to demand political equality and rotating presidency because their army – if they have one – would be even more pathetic than ours.
This is the new strategy our leaders should be exploring as it would greatly improve the prospects of a fair and viable solution, so long as the devious foreign powers do not use the Maltese factor to press for a speedy closure of the Cyprob.
NATIONAL saviour and leader the Alliance of Lillikas, Yiorkos Lillikas, who has acquired a reputation for his bold and original thinking, wasted no time in giving his views about the new strategy. He said:
“Forty years after the twin crime we must carve a new assertive policy. We must attribute again to the Cyprus problem its true character, as a problem of invasion and occupation. We must give to our struggle the correct content as an anti-occupation, liberation struggle.”
I hear Yiorkos is even toying with the idea of moving into a flat and offering his palatial, super-luxury home in the Laiki Sporting Club area to be used as a training camp for the volunteers of his liberation struggle.
His fellow-Paphite Yiannakis Omirou had an even better idea for a new strategy. “To ensure unity of action we must propose as a basis for a settlement the unanimous communique of the National Council of 2009.” There is a good chance the Maltese would accept this even though it might be a better idea to first try out the assertive policy combined with the anti-occupation, liberation struggle.
THE ANNIVERSARY of the coup is the favourite time of year for the Paphite windbag Omirou because it gives him the opportunity to talk about the time when he announced on a local radio in Paphos that Makarios was not dead, as the coupist-controlled CyBC had been reporting on July 15.
This year he also wrote an article in which he praised the resistance to the coup by the paramilitary Union of Paphos Fighters who had been given guns by the Makarios government. According to Omirou, EDEK also had a “well-organised, armed group” which joined the Union of Paphos Fighters and put the whole of the Paphos district under “the popular resistance forces.”
Omirou wrote: “In Paphos there was not just simply resistance. There was a mass popular uprising. It was a popular revolution against the barbarity of the totalitarianism the Athens junta was trying to impose… The mass nature of the resistance was owed to the democratic traditions of the district…”
The district even had armed civilians to protect its democratic traditions and ensure everyone in Paphos supported Makarios.
FOR AKEL’s commies, the anniversary of the coup is an opportunity for it to attack the nationalist right as well as the Yanks and NATO, who were allegedly behind the coup and the invasion. This conspiracy theory has been challenged by a book published a couple of months ago, sparking a rabid reaction from the commies.
“Active involvement of US” in the coup read front page headline in Haravghi on Tuesday. On the same day party chief Andros Kyprianou condemned efforts to absolve the US and NATO of their guilt for the coup and the invasion, while accusing the government of re-writing history.
We must all accept history as it has been written by AKEL’s propaganda department on the instructions of its Soviet masters because anything else would constitute a distortion of communist truth.
LAST WEEK’S exclusive report about the Yanks’ plans to have former Under-Secretary-General of the UN Lynn Pasco-e appointed in the Al Downer position was not officially confirmed by our government because the consultations were meant to be kept confidential.
One hack who contacted his government sources was told that the government would rather nothing was written about the matter. Meanwhile AKEL, which was not very enthusiastic about the appointment, has avoided vetoing it because it sensed that this was what Prez Nik would have liked. But Nik could not possibly oppose the man favoured by our new strategic partners to kick-start the talks and maintain the pretence that he is committed to a settlement.
A CyBC show discussed the Pasco-e speculation, with its US correspondent arguing that his appointment would be disastrous for the Greek Cypriots because he was a tough nut and a big Annan-plan supporter. The show’s presenter said it would be terrible if after all the trouble we went to to get rid of Downer we would end up with a special envoy that was worse than the Aussie. A ‘Bring back big bad Al’ campaign is on the cards.
THE TROIKA is back in town but we hear its members are not very pleased with the feet-dragging over the foreclosure and insolvency legislation. Foreclosures legislation has been the main subject of most of the Troika meetings.
There have also been rumours that the Troikans are concerned about the complacency shown by the government, which has been constantly congratulating itself for returning to the markets and sorting out public finances, and is considering new measures. One report is that it would ask the government to cut another 100 million from its spending as a way of reminding it that it is still in a programme.
The Troikans must have thought they were dealing with lunatics when they were told that the sale price of a property taken over by a bank would have to be approved by the former owner, its debtor, who would be entitled to commission his own valuation. This is the democratic way of executing foreclosures – the former owner having a say over the selling price. Democratic traditions are not the exclusivity of the Paphos district.
WHEN the heads of the Troika arrived for their Friday meeting with the House Finance Committee, there were only two deputies there. Ethnarch Junior, the committee chairman, and Green leader Perdikis (about whom we will never again write a bad thing after everything he has done to help Cyprus rugby) were the only ones present.
Delia and Martin sat in the meeting room waiting for the committee’s deputies most of whom were outside smoking and drinking coffee. This rudeness made us all ashamed. I do not know if our deputies were trying to prove a point, but they should have known that it was very ungentlemanly to leave a lady waiting, even if she represented the hated IMF.
This was no way to treat the delightful Delia who repaid the rudeness by not budging an inch in the discussions about the NPLs and foreclosures, which inspired a memorable sound-bite from AKEL deputy Stavros Evagorou. He said the international lenders “have praised Cyprus’ return to the markets but did not concern themselves with Cypriots’ inability to return to the supermarkets.”
ETHNARCH junior revealed at last what he had in mind when demanding the renegotiation of the memorandum. It is all about the sale of the Greek operations of the Cypriot banks to the Bank of Piraeus last year.
Junior argued that the forced sale, ordered by the Eurogroup as a condition of the bailout, constituted a theft of Cypriot assets worth €3.5 billion. This was reportedly the value of the assets transferred to Piraeus Bank which paid only €500 million for all the business in Greece of the Cypriot banks. Junior is demanding that the €3.5 billion was returned to Kyproulla.
Who will return it is anyone’s guess. If our Central Bank Governor was dumb enough to agree a price for the banks’ assets at just a seventh of their value why would the international lenders cover the loss? It would be interesting to hear how Junior proposes that the government negotiates the payment of €3.5 billion by the Troika for a benefit enjoyed exclusively by the shareholders of Piraeus Bank.
WE WERE all shocked to hear the news about the FBME, the administration of which was taken over by the Central Bank after the US government declared it “a financial institution of primary money laundering concern.”
Nobody could say what this actually means, but if the Tanzania-based bank is forced to leave Kyproulla there would be some 300 staff added to the ranks of the unemployed. Would the Central Bank have taken such drastic action if Professor Panicos was still in charge?
His personal assistant and and ruler of the bank during his governorship Eleni Markadji would never have allowed it as her husband had been a director and consultant of FBME for many years. But Markadji, who is currently on unpaid leave, is no longer the force she had been during Panicos’ rule.
I WOULD like to end on a positive note, even though today is the 40th anniversary of the invasion. We may have been a bit harsh on our loser politicians for their 40-year failure to secure a settlement that would end the Turkish occupation, but we should also praise them because in these 40 years they ensured that we did not lose any more of our territory to the Turks. We need to accentuate the positive ever so often.
