IN THE END, the apprentice fascists had their way. The play Our River, which promoted Greek-Turkish friendship, will not be staged by the secondary school of Rizokarpasso, as had been originally planned, announced the education minister Andreas Demetriou, last weekend.
It was a big triumph for the champions of patriotic theatre aesthetics – Falas, Koulias, Varnavas, Sampson, Koutsou – who had mounted a fascistic campaign in the media against the education minister and the headmistress of the school for their decision to stage a play they had never seen but had heard portrayed a Turk as a normal human being.
Had it been a play about hairy, axe-wielding Turks making cocktails with Greek blood these aesthetes would have regarded it as high art, but that’s another story. We supporters of free thought and free love were very disappointed that the minister gave in to the bullying of a bunch of Neanderthals, egged on by the power-mad TV station owners.
That the plays staged in state schools would be subject to the approval of intellectually challenged zealots with fascistic tendencies, however, must be quite re-assuring for thousands of parents who feared their kids might end up leaving secondary school with an open mind.
THE MINISTER could claim with some justification that he did not give in to the Falas – Koulias gang, but had taken into account the wishes of the hapless parents, with whom he had met at the ministry some 10 days ago.
Parents of Rizokarpasso kids had come to Nicosia to discuss the play with Demetriou and he asked them what they wanted to do. They all asked that the play not be staged because they could not deal with the aggravation it had caused them.
Apparently several of them had been called by the zealots and urged not to allow their kids to take part in the play. They were made to feel, by the guardians of bash-patriotic correctness, that they would be betraying their country if their children took part in the offensive play.
Ordinary farming folk, living in the middle of nowhere, tend to take seriously the idiotic nonsense they are told by deputies, whom they naively consider better-educated and more intelligent than themselves. It sounds crazy, but in the enclaved farming community there are people who respect the views of dim-witted patriotism merchants like Karcharias and Varnavas.
And Demetriou, like a caring, feudal landlord, respected the poor peasants’ wishes, or so he said.
AN ANTENNA film crew accompanied the enclaved parents to the ministry for the previous week’s meeting to cover the momentous event. When he saw the crew, the normally calm minister lost his rag and told the cameraman to get out of the building.
The station made a big issue out of the snub on its news, slamming the minister for his authoritarian manner and for showing no respect to the right of its viewers to be informed. The news was all about the heroic film crew, which had defied danger in pursuing its mission to bring its anxious viewers action-packed pictures of some villagers sitting round a big table with a minister, eating tyropites.
APART from the cameraman, a bash-patriotic teacher from Rizokrpasso school, known as Mrs Stephanou, who had disagreed with the staging of the play, also tried to gate-crash the meeting, accompanied by her guardian and husband.
Mrs Stephanou has taken the role of Eleni Foka, the nutty teacher of the Karpass who had been feted as a national hero by the media back in the nineties even though she never waxed her facial hair.
Foka 2 has appeared on radio stations accusing the headmistress of the Rizokarpasso gymnasium for her liberal views and telling us how alien to our culture the other play – Performing the Experience – that was shown to the kids was. To be fair, in her criticism of that play, there were signs of intelligence, which was quite refreshing.
If the bash-patriots are to do her the honour of officially declaring her the new Eleni Foka, she may have to dumb down a bit and grow a moustache.
MR AND MRS Stephanou were not allowed to attend the meeting by Demetriou. Mr Stephanou, who is substantially more patriotic than his wife, became particularly irritated when it was pointed out to him that he had no business being at the meeting as he did not represent the enclaved or the school.
He insisted that he should be allowed in as he was a Cypriot citizen and paid his taxes, although I suspect the real reason is that he likes to act as the wife’s spokesman, because women cannot be trusted to say the right things. It would not be the first time Mr Stephanou would have spoken on behalf of the yeneka.
A few weeks ago, there was a meeting between the education minister and the staff of Rizokarpasso school, at which all parties agreed to take a common line about the play and avoid public statements. The day after the meeting a letter from Mrs Stephanou appeared in a paper, slamming the agreement she had fully supported during the meeting. Demetriou expressed his surprise, when this was pointed out to him on a radio show.
A newspaper hack who contacted Mrs Stephanou found out that the letter had actually been written by Mr Stephanou, who as a patriotic, male Cypriot citizen who pays his taxes is entitled to write letters to the press in his wife’s name. As for the missus, she said she would rather suffer the embarrassment than have a public row with her lord and master.
THE EXCHANGES over the gymnasium did not end, with Demetriou having a dig at EDEK deputy Varnavas for seeking to perpetuate the row by resorting to lies. This prompted the intervention of the mighty, honorary chairman for life of EDEK Dr Faustus, who came to the defence of his deputy.
The pompous socialist windbag who, despite his advancing years, is still a threat to the environment with his vast daily output of untreated political waste, surpassed himself with his put-down of Demetriou. He said: “They can carry on making frog sounds, the neo-philosophers of political masochism, who with academic pseudo-integrity of the absurd put blame on our side.” The palaeo-philosophers of political cretinism, meanwhile, always blame the other side.
DEPUTY Varnavas, as if wanting to prove to the world that the intelligence chromosome is lacking from his genes, wrote a full page article in the last issue of the weekly rag Pontiki complaining about the “intellectual terrorism” being exercised against him. His row with the minister showed that some did not accept “the opposing view”, he wrote.
We are all democratic people here but accepting the opposing view is one thing and accepting the idiotic view is quite another. Sorry to disappoint Varnavas but there is nothing wrong with intellectual terrorism when it is directed at moronic views, in fact it is an imperative.
HEALTH minister Christos Patsalides, we are happy to report, is losing the war he declared on the American Heart Institute (AHI) after one of the Institute’s doctor’s hurt his big but fragile, Paphite ego.
This week he had to ask one of the Institute’s consultants to see a heart patient at the Nicosia General Hospital because an expert opinion was needed regarding the treatment. It goes without saying that the big-headed Paphite was prepared to eat humble pie because the patient was an important personality and he could not put his ego above the man’s health.
If it were some poor villager without influence, it is doubtful, that an AHI consultant would have been asked to look at him, but that is another matter. In matters of healthcare, we are moving closer to comrade mukhtar’s dream of a fairer society.
IT WAS not the first time in the last week that the AHI came to the rescue of the state health system. Last Sunday a woman suffered a heart attack and was admitted to Limassol General Hospital requiring urgent treatment.
Such was the se
riousness of her condition, she could not be treated in Limassol and the cardiologist in charge decided that she should be sent to Nicosia General which had all the necessary facilities. The only problem was that he could not find any doctor at the Nicosia General Cardiology Department.
He had been trying to contact the head of the Cardiology Department at Nicosia General for four hours, to tell him to prepare for the arrival of the patient, but could not get hold of him or any of his colleagues. It was the Green Monday weekend and the government doctors had decided to close the shop and enjoy the carnival.
Left with no choice he contacted the AHI and sent the patient there. The Institute immediately brought in a specialist cardiologist to treat the hapless patient. A similar incident had happened on New Year’s Eve. Again all the cardiologists of the Nicosia General had switched off their mobile phones and a patient in urgent need of care had to be taken to the AHI. With such dedicated doctors in the state health sector, Pats is right to want to close down private hospitals.
YOU HAD to admire the comrade leader’s cockiness and swagger during the televised news conference to mark his first year in office. He was so confident he even admitted that he had been proved wrong to have supported the postponement of the introduction of the euro by a year.
His most disingenuous answer related to whether he was satisfied with the progress towards the establishment of a just/fair society. He never promised a fair society he said, because this was impossible to achieve in the capitalist system; it could be made fair and he was working on that. The Soviet system in contrast was absolutely just and fair – he did not say that, I did.
I DO NOT know whether CyBC workers held the threatened two-hour work stoppage on Thursday night, nor do I care. The stoppage would have been held in order to push for a long list of demands regarding pay and promotions. In the long list of demands was my tip for union demand of the year – putting asphalt on the corporation’s parking areas. Whoever said that the only thing CyBC workers cared for was money?
