I DO NOT know if it is the same in other towns, but the only thing you currently see on Nicosia’ main roads are billboards featuring serious-looking men in charcoal grey or dark blue suit, white shirt and a banker’s tie staring expectantly into the void.
These boring bores, sending the subliminal message to bring a little more dullness and greyness into our political life – as if there is not enough now – are parliamentary candidates asking for our vote in a fortnight’s time.
Before anyone accuses our establishment of sexism, we should mention that there are some blonde candidates and a solitary DIKO brunette on billboards, but they are less irritating because there are very few, heavily outnumbered by the sexy men on show.
The only way these grey bores with air-brushed faces, competing for our votes differentiate themselves is with brief slogans which either advertise their personal qualities or tell us why we should vote for them.
MY FAVOURITE poster by far is that of Neophytos (Phytos) Constantinou, standing for DIKO, which you can see on the road leading to Limassol Avenue just before the turning for the International Conference Centre.
Phytos, as he is known to the electorate, is pictured in a Napoleonic pose – looking ahead with one arm across his stomach, his slightly clenched fist resting on it. The billboard of DIKO’s Napoleon, who looks suspiciously like a Paphite, also boasted the best slogan I have seen so far.
It says: ‘You know why’. The orginial Greek is: ‘Esy xeris yiati’. If there is anyone out there that knows why we should vote for Phytos please drop us a line because I am having great difficulty thinking of any reason to vote for him.
ANOTHER wonderfully witty slogan is that of DISY candidate Sotiris Drakos, whom I served with in the National Guard, 30 years ago, and suspected even back then that he had political ambitions, because he always took himself way too seriously.
Drakos’ slogan is ‘Ftani pia’ (I have used the original Greek because I did not want the wisdom to be lost in translation) which could be rendered into English as ‘Enough is enough’ or ‘No more’. There is no clue what it is he can’t take any more of, or how his election would put an end to it, but who cares anyway.
THE MOST pompous slogan, as you would expect, was on the billboard of DISY’s guest candidate, legal eagle Dr Christos Clerides. His photo was in the style used for Hollywood film stars in the fifties, taken at an angle and showing him from the shoulders up, focusing on his handsome and distinguished face.
Clerides, who proved us wrong 10 days ago, by writing an article which made reference to his heroic resistance to the Annan plan. We had predicted he would avoid a sales pitch on the plan so as not to cause offence to DISY voters, but were wrong. Then again, he took a very forgiving and understanding stance towards all those misguided idiots who voted ‘yes’ in 2004, which was pretty gracious of him.
His slogan states ‘Kano to logo sou agona’, which inadequately translated means ‘I make your word, a fight’. Liberally translated it means that he would fight on land, sea, air and the law-court, for what his voters wanted, as long as it was not a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation.
PHARMACISTS must be making a lot of money these days, because nobody has paid for more billboards and posters at bus-stops than DISY’s Nicos Nouris, who is looking to graduate from municipal councillor to deputy. I suppose people do not cut down on their purchase of medicine during a recession.
Nouris’ picture is in every neighbourhood, promising us that he will do his job ‘With knowledge and strength’.
But nobody could better the gigantic posters put up by DIKO’s deputy leader Giorgos Colocassides. He has taken the shop that was once the Cyprus Airways booking office, on the busiest intersection in the centre of Nicosia, and covered its windows with a mega poster featuring a happy family dancing around him.
The qualities he has to offer are ‘morality, dignity’ and something else I cannot remember. You’d think the guy is looking for a wife, advertising these qualities.
THE ONLY big party candidates not showing their faces are the Akelites, who are prohibited from promoting themselves by the party. Sadly there are no badly-dressed pleb candidates on the billboards.
This is because no individual is bigger than the party, with the exception of the comrade president, whom the candidates are not only allowed but encouraged to promote when campaigning for election.
In fact the better they defend and promote the great comrade leader, during the campaigning, the better their chances of getting elected. You know why.
WHEN THE news about the killing of Osama Bin Laden was announced, I half-expected our West-hating government to issue an announcement condemning the US raid as an act of state terrorism and violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Thankfully, it said nothing, because we all know who our government would side with if it had to choose between Al-Qaeda and the US. Its silence invited criticism from some deputies for its unwillingness to side with the rest of the Western world which welcomed the news of Bin Laden’s death.
Asked why there was no statement, government spokesman Stef Stef, said there was no need for one. “Whatever the EU said about it covers us too,” he told the Mail. It did not feel covered by what the EU said about Libya, or about Wednesday’s Hamas-Fatah deal, and issued its own statement.
Foreign minister Marcos Kyprianou welcomed the deal and said Cyprus was ready to “offer its political support to the Palestinian people.” The comrade president’s love affair with Israel, did not last very long.
HIS LOVE affair with Russia, in stark contrast, is becoming deeper and stronger by the day. Over the last few days we have been reading press reports about an alleged interest by the giant Russian gas company Gazprom, in exploring for natural gas in our exclusive economic zone.
This is more a case of wishful thinking by the government, even though there are rumours that the comrade has made a couple of attempts to get Gazprom interested in our hydrocarbons. Dealing with a massive Russian multinational that makes billions in profits is much preferable to dealing with a massive US multinational that makes billions in profits, at least for our principled government.
NOBODY can cloud an issue better than our good friend Charilaos who has become very skilled in confusing and fobbing off journalists. His most frequently-used argument when answering critics of the government’s economic ruin policy is that they were causing huge harm to the economy. But are they causing anywhere near as much harm as the government’s policies?
Of course not. The budget deficit for the first quarter of 2011 was 1.7 per cent of GDP, which was three times as high as it was for the corresponding period of last year. This, he claimed was because of an unforeseen fall in revenue (the Central Bank was partly to blame because it paid the government less dividend) combined with one-off expenditures, such as the €20 million he gave to Cyprus Airways. The figures would be better in April with tourism prospects looking good.
Ethnarch Junior claimed that the high deficit for the first quarter was the result of transferring expenditure from 2010 to this year. He accused Charilaos of “creative accounting alchemies.” If only he was right. We could sure do with an alchemist running the economy the way things are now.
THE ‘TRNC’ might be an illegal entity, but it has helped us learn about other pseudo-states that we never knew existed. On Wednesday, the pseudo-PIO of the north reported that the president of the autonomous Republic of Gagauzia, Mihail Formuzal was in the pseudo-state for a pseudo-official visit.
President Formuzal (his name sounds like a medicine for constipation) met Dervis Eroglu and said that relations between the two countries would be further developed. There are currently 36 Gagauzians studying at the universities in the north.
Meanwhile, later this month a delegation from the pseudo-assembly, headed by the pseudo-speaker Hasan Bozer, would visit the autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan. The report did not say how many Nakhchivanians were studying at universities in the north.
ON MONDAY night the DISY Fuhrer Nice Nik appeared on one of those boring, CyBC election shows, in which four hacks were asking the questions, with Yiannis Kareklas, who needs to buy a better quality hair dye, as their headmaster.
Three of the hacks were CyBC staffers while the fourth was a Haravghi journo. All four must be members of AKEL, because they could not hide the hostility they felt towards the hapless Nik. All their questions were aimed at proving that the Fuhrer was a big supporter of the comrade’s handling of the Cyprob, but was hiding it for electoral gain.
All three staked a claim for promotion with their performance.
BUT AS Sotiris Drakos says, ‘enough is enough,’ and to paraphrase DIKO’s Napoleonic candidate, ‘you know why’.
