By Patroclos
THE PATRIOTIC wolves were baying for the blood of the departing US ambassador John Koenig after he told a University of Cyprus audience last Tuesday that the Cyprob was “not an issue of invasion and occupation.”
It was a comment calculated to anger Greek Cypriots, suggesting that even experienced diplomats allow their personal feelings and grudges get the better of them. Koenig may be a bit pissed off with us because he had worked hard to help the peace efforts, and in recognition of this he was publicly insulted by Prez Nik in the memorable television outburst against the untrustworthy Yanks. Nik also refuses to see him.
He therefore grabbed the opportunity to get his own back. His views caused mass hysteria, inspiring many thousands of words of vitriol in the papers (Phil had three columnists savaging him on Thursday) and on websites. Politicians had a chance to show off their bravery – the level of bravery needed to attack a sheep – by calling for the horrid Yank’s immediate deportation.
The Alliance of Lillikas was among the bravest, calling on the government to declare Koenig persona non grata and to ask for his immediate recall by Washington. Yiorkos believed that “tolerance through lukewarm and insipid diplomatic representations by the government, constituted taking part of the responsibility.”
As the government cannot be trusted to defend the national interest, the opposition warriors should consider direct, dynamic action – they could set up a full-time lynch mob to deal effectively with all these meddling, patronising foreigners (Barth Eide expressed equally provocative views a few weeks ago). We could also use it against the troika if it insists on the privatisation of CyTA.
THE INSIPID government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides was left with the thankless task of failing to appease the political lynch mob. “It is statements like these that for years have hindered progress in the Cyprus problem,” he said politely, but unconvincingly. The matter would be taken up with the US government he said.
Delusions of grandeur, yet again; as if the Yanks, with all the problems of the world to think about, would give a toss that their ambassador said something which upset some people in a midget country. Nevertheless, the CyBC’s correspondent in Washington sought a comment about Koenig’s provocative view from a US government spokesman and was given the stock answer about the US supporting the peace process.
However on Thursday the CyBC reported that our ambassador to Washington George Chacalli (he is a Shakallis that chooses French spelling for his name) had raised the issue at the State Department where he met a deputy under-secretary of state, an indication of how seriously the Yanks took the matter. The CyBC correspondent, citing ‘reliable sources’ reported that the deputy under-secretary adopted an ‘apologetic tone’. It was another triumph of our assertive diplomacy.
STAYING in the US, I hear that our permanent representative at the UN, Nicos Emiliou, loaned his exclusive Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan so that the former president of the Cyprus Federation of America, Peter (formerly known as Panicos) Papanicolaou could host a dinner in honour of the Orthodox Archbishop of America Demetrios.
This was a surprise because Emiliou’s partner reportedly does not agree to the use of the apartment for official events after the foreign ministry stopped covering the costs for waiters. However, the taxpayer should not worry because the tab for the dinner in honour of the Archbishop was picked up by the generous Peter, a contractor who recently paid his way out of trouble with the US authorities.
Peter likes to boast about his generosity, betraying his villager mentality and humble origins. I hear that he also settled the bill when Emiliou took out Prez Nik for dinner at a Greek restaurant in New York before our prez’s operation. And Nik was under the impression that Emiliou had paid at out of his own pocket.
YOU HAD to admire the audacity of the Mayor of Morphou Charalambos Pittas who visited Nik with a delegation of his non-existent municipality to tell the prez that any settlement which did not include the return of Morphou would be unacceptable.
How can you take this guy seriously when in 2004 he still found the settlement – which included the return of Morphou to the Greek Cypriots – unacceptable? The one time the Turks offered the return of Morphou, Pittas made it clear he did not want it back, by fiercely campaigning against the A plan.
Pittas should make up his mind and let us know. Which settlement is more unacceptable to him – one with or without the return of Morphou?
ANYONE fearing that DIKO had softened its stance on Cyprob because it did not issue an announcement disparaging last weekend’s Ledra Street stroll by the two amigos, like the rest of bash-patriotic parties had done, should stop worrying.
The reason for this, and the failure of Junior to post a put-down on Twitter, was the participation in the walk of the Nicosia mayor Constantinos Yiorkadjis, who happens to be his half brother. It was very sweet of Junior to suppress his rage and bottle up the frustration he must have felt over Nik’s latest act of treachery, for the sake of his brother who seemed very comfortable socialising with the enemy.
Will DIKO say nothing again, now that Yiorkadjis has called for the opening of a crossing point at Paphos Gate?
EDEK, meanwhile, has taken another decisive step in liberating the occupied areas, under the dynamic and visionary new leadership of Dr Sizopoulos.
In a move that illustrated the new leader’s determination to take big risks, he bravely pulled EDEK out of the monthly meeting of Greek and Turkish Cypriot parties organised by the Slovak embassy, in the futile hope of bringing politicians closer together.
The meetings, which have been going on fruitlessly for over 20 years, have operated as a low-level bickering forum which rarely agrees on anything and primarily reminds the participating politicians of the big gulf separating the two sides. It seems weird that EDEK no longer wants to be reminded of this.
APART from last Sunday’s letter from our learned friend Polys Polyviou, criticising Patroclos for being unfair to our negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis – “one of the most accomplished and decent public servants I know” – our establishment also received two calls of complaint on the same subject.
Mavroyiannis has become a sacred cow, and it seems his followers want to deprive us of our democratic right to be unfair to people. Incidentally, on Thursday the sacred cow diplomat was the subject of the talks between Nik and Mustafa with the latter complaining to the former about Mavroyiannis’ speech, earlier in the week, about Turkey’s guarantees.
Akinci said Mavroyiannis’ attempt to negotiate in public was not helpful and Nik agreed, telling his negotiator to cut the public statements. Will anyone be calling Nik to complain because he dared to tell the sacred cow to stop mooing in public?
KNOW-IT-ALL deputies put a lot of stupid things into laws, but their latest achievement takes the biscuit. They amended regulations that would allow dentists that follow a few training courses to call themselves doctors.
In most European countries, to carry out oral and maxillofacial (jaws and face) surgery a person requires a doctor’s and dentist’s qualification plus several years training. On Thursday, our legislature voted through regulations that would allow dentists, who have done a couple of training courses in this type of surgery, to call themselves doctors (no passing of exams or university degree necessary) and specialists in oral and maxillofacial surgery.
The deputy behind this bit of very Cypriot lunacy was DIKO’s Angelos Votsis who is a pharmacist and therefore fully qualified to turn dentists into doctors. The reason he drafted the new regulations is because Votsis has a female relative who is a dentist who did some maxillofacial surgery training courses and felt she was eligible to the title of doctor.
The Cyprus Medical Association would not consider her a doctor as she did not have the qualifications, so her relative amended the law so she could call herself a maxillofacial surgeon and doctor. In Kyproulla you can be whatever you want if you are related to a deputy.
It was no surprise that the political parties voted through the regulations for Votsis’ relative, despite the complaints of the qualified maxillofacial surgeons. There are fewer than a dozen doctors with this specialisation, representing very few votes.
AND WE suspected Cypriot football was corrupt and dishonest. If FIFA is the premier league of corruption and wheeler-dealing our guys are still in the fourth division working hard to win promotion. But they are trying to follow the shining example set by FIFA’s thieving big-wigs.
The members of the Cyprus football community had to comment about what was going on in Zurich and predictably they all came up with the same clichés. To their credit they avoided moralising, which is our second most popular sport after football, opting instead for expressions of sadness and regret about the state of the game’s world governing body.
What was happening was very bad for football, they lamented in one voice, like the chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy. But who cares if FIFA is a corrupt organisation run by a cabal of dishonest, greedy, self-serving, old boys, parasitically cashing in on the game?
This would in no way diminish our enjoyment of Saturday’s Champions League Final between Barcelona and Juventus. Our guys seem to forget that football is about the players and what they do with the ball on the pitch, not about the parasitic administrators.
WE HAD to boast that there was a Cypriot among the FIFA officials charged by the US authorities for racketeering and money laundering. Our man was Costas Takkas (with a surname like that he must be from an AKEL family), who had served as general-secretary of the Cayman Islands’ football association, but from what we have heard he was a British citizen and we could not claim him as one of our own.
But we have our own Marios Lefkaritis, an UEFA vice-president, on the FIFA executive committee. Lefkaritis, who had voluntarily gone to Zurich last week for questioning by the Swiss authorities, in December 2010 voted in favour of Qatar staging the 2022 World Cup because he believed it would be good for matches to be played in a desert, amid temperatures of 50 degrees centigrade and in a country of two million people that is rubbish at football.
I suspect he will be asked by the Swiss authorities to explain why he voted for Qatar. I would love to know what reason he gives.
NO MATTER what happens in our basket case country, the sense of entitlement of our public parasites remains as resolute as it has always been. Overpaid, layabout army officers are currently in dispute with the National Guard chief because they refuse to do more than three nights of duty per month.
They are demanding the whole structure of the Guard is re-organised so they do not have to do more nights on duty. As they represent a lot of votes, deputies on the defence committee are avoiding approving the regulations submitted by the defence ministry in the hope a compromise is reached between the Chief and his lazy, insubordinate officers.
LARNACA district court has been without a registrar for the last six weeks. The registrar went on sick leave as soon she received notification that she would be transferred from Nicosia to Larnaca and nobody knows when she will return to work, according to press reports. It is standard practice for public parasites to become ill as soon as they are transferred somewhere they do not want to go.
They just go to a medical public parasite who gives them as many weeks’ sick leave as they like. Unlimited, fully-paid sick leave for healthy parasites objecting to a work transfer is just another conquest of the workers that will never be given up.
