WHO WOULD have thought a couple of months ago that Mehmet Ali Talat would have been going for a morning stroll in Ledra Street? This latest act of provocation by the Turkish Cypriot pseudo-leader, just when the climate had improved, would never have occurred if the Ethnarch was still mismanaging water resources.
But the defender of our national sovereignty has gone and Ankara’s jumped-up little puppet seized the opportunity to violate the buffer zone and invade the free part of the capital, making the expansionist intentions of his military masters crystal clear.
He thought he would fool us with this crude public relations stunt and his false smile, but every single Ledra Street shopkeeper knew he was just surveying the territories he would be ruling over, once our na?ve comrade presidente signs the new version of the Satanic plan, which will be brought back in a few months.
And before anyone accuses me of being a miserable kodjakari and failing to see the positive side of the crafty Ottoman’s walkabout, I would like to ask why he brought a small army of secret, pseudo-gorillas in dark shades, posing as his bodyguards, with him? This was a flagrant violation of the buffer zone, UN resolutions, the Human Rights Charter, the High Level Agreements and Shengen and showed utter contempt for the sovereignty of the internationally recognised People’s Republic of Kyproulla.
Even the claims by his cheerleaders in the south, that Talat’s provocative walk on Ledra Street avec les pseudo-gorillas would improve the climate, was proved wrong. The oppressive dust cloud was back in our atmosphere yesterday.
THE TALAT charm offensive was inaugurated last Monday when Mrs Talat paid a social visit to the very modest presidential house in Makedonitissa to comrade first lady, Elisavet. The provocative subtext of the visit was missed by all the TV kodjakares, who were obviously asleep during their religion lessons at school.
Mrs Talat, on arriving Elisavet’s door-step, handed her pot with a white lily, the political significance of which was missed by ignorant newshounds. Was it not a white lily the archangel gave to the Virgin Mary when he announced to her the Immaculate Conception? The gift was a subtle reminder of Talat’s hard-line commitment to the ‘virgin birth’ of the partnership state, even though his wife misleadingly claimed the lily was a symbol of peace.
COMRADE Elisavet gave her guest a Lefkaritiko embroidery, also laden with political symbolism. “Just as the Lefkarites create this embroidery with patience and effort, the people of the island, GCs and TCs, will embroider together, with common efforts, peace on our island,” she said.
From what I know, very few Lefkaritisses have the patience or the appetite for hard work required to make these traditional embroideries and most of the Lefkaritika now being sold in the shops is made in China. This is no bad thing, because if we ask the Chinese to embroider peace on our island it would arrive much sooner.
Apart from its symbolism, the visit also revealed the interior of the presidential home and showed us that our first lady’s taste in furniture is slightly inferior to her taste in clothes.
SPEAKING of poor taste, I have to say that our establishment was very disappointed to learn that Talat bought a Mikis Theodorakis CD during his Ledra St tour.
Theodorakis’ music makes you want to march to Eleftheria Square, holding a red flag, to listen to an anti-occupation speech by Dr Faustus Lyssarides – not the healthiest of impulses.
In fact, in the seventies, in the years after the invasion, organisers of anti-occupation rallies always played dozens of Theodorakis songs before the politicians appeared on the Nicosia city walls to make their speeches about the unyielding struggle for vindication. Organisers calculated that after being subjected to Theodorakis’ pompous political tunes for an hour, the crowds would be begging to hear heroic speeches by the politicians.
THE CYPRUS International Institute for the Environment and Public Health in association with the Harvard School of Public Health, released yet another study about the harmful effects of smoking last week. I am no academic, but I think it is safe to say that this was not exactly cutting edge research.
We are paying Harvard millions of pounds every year to be associated with our Institute and all we are getting are reports telling us that smoking is bad for us. Last month it released a report that informed us that Cyprus was being hit by more dust storms (10 to 16 per annum) in recent years than in the past (two to three per annum) and that the dust worsened respiratory as well as cardiovascular problems, which were the leading causes of death in our region – very cutting edge again.
Last week’s report, presented with great fanfare, informed us that one in five children could die from smoking-related diseases if we did not ban smoking in all public places. This is more a public scare institute, constantly peddling possible causes of death.
And why should we give up smoking if we are going to die from the respiratory and cardiovascular health problems caused by the dust storms which cannot be banned from our atmosphere?
EFFORTS to create anti-smoking hysteria in the People’s Republic are doomed to fail because we Cypriots are too smart to take seriously the carefully-worded and qualified findings of prejudiced researchers. Our beautiful island remains a smoker’s paradise, in which we show a healthy contempt for self-righteous and morally superior non-smokers.
Last Thursday, three people went to a restaurant in Larnaca and asked for a table. “Smoking or no smoking,” asked the manager. Impressed that the restaurant had a policy, they asked for ‘no smoking’. “Well you will have to sit outside,” the manager informed them.
FOREIGN Minister Marcos Kyprianou, who as EU Health Commissioner undertook several anti-smoking initiatives, is finding life in our smokers’ paradise quite difficult. Last Wednesday he had a dinner party for political hacks, 90 per cent of whom, to his obvious displeasure, were smoking away. Even the foreign ministry premises, a public building at which smoking is supposedly prohibited, are not free of tobacco smoke. Kyprianou told hacks how on entering the foyer, he could always smell smoke, but never saw anyone smoking. But his biggest battle was with one of his office’s secretaries who insisted that he should have an ash-tray on the coffee-table in his office even though he did not want one. In the end he got his way, but full marks for the secretary for standing up for the rights of smokers.
THANKS to Offsite for bringing to our attention a memo sent, last June, by our permanent mission in Geneva to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, boasting about our government’s model management of water resources. It said:
“The right to drinking water and sanitation constitutes one of the most fundamental human rights and Cyprus has the pleasure to report that 99% of its population have equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.”
Maybe this was true last June, but today 10 per cent of the population that lives in Paphos has more equitable access to drinking water than the rest of us, especially the poor mugs who have the misfortune to live in Oroklini and Lakatamia; they were denied of their most fundamental human right for five days in a row last week.
The concluding paragraph of the memo says it all: “The constructive co-operation and good co-ordination between all these Departments (dealing with water) will bring up the best results to water resources in Cyprus and will therefore ensure good quality and enough quantity of water.”
I think most people would have liked a little more quantity than the enough ensured by the constructive co-operation and good co-ordination between the Departments.
COMRADE presidente may be a communist, ideologically, but he has done nothing so far to threaten the market economy. The same cannot be said of the media, which is constantly demanding the imposition of maximum prices and complaining because businesses are making a profit.
The latest targets of media profiteering outrage were the hapless guys who own water trucks and drive around all day to fill empty water tanks. Politis was outraged because the trucks were charging 60 times more than the water boards for a cubic metre of water (€40). The crusading hacks forget that the truck owner needs to pay for his petrol, wear and tear of the truck, pay off his loan for the truck and earn a wage for the service he provides. And he is not forcing anyone to buy his water.
By June, we will be happy to pay the truck owner 100 times the water board price to fill our tank, and if he answers our call we will be treating him as a saint not a profiteer.
OUR GOOD friend and foreign minister Charilaos Stavrakis is off to the Ukraine tomorrow in the hope of persuading the Ukrainian government not to follow Russia’s example and put the PRK on their tax-black-list. The Ukraine’s finance ministry is pissed off with us because we have not given it information it requested regarding the activities of Ukrainian companies based here. We wish him success.
On Thursday night, Charilaos let his hair down. He was spotted at Aegeon Tavern, sitting at a table in front of the bouzouki group enjoying the rembetiko sound, which I never thought was his kind of music. At least he did not get up to shake his body (that would have been a sight worth watching), confining himself to applauding one of his companions who was up dancing all night.
Did Charilaos have permission from comrade presidente to go to Aegeon, a well-known den of anti-Akelite, pro-enosis, hard-core nationalists opposed to a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation? Surely such taverns must be out of bounds to members of the government, even if they have a no-smoking section.
OMIROS Alexandrou, a victim of the CSE bubble who has been unsuccessfully campaigning for years to bring those responsible for the stock market scam of 2000 to justice might be interested to know that the man behind the Marketrends super-bubble is still living in the lap of luxury, behaving like a Russian plutocrat.
On the same night that old money was enjoying the rembetiko sounds at the modest surroundings of Aegeon, the representative of new money, Lambros Christofi was throwing a party for about 15 friends at the upmarket Nicosia eatery Bagatelle, entertained by a pretty chanteuse, accompanied by the piano playing of Marios Meletiou. Christofi, showing he has class, had opened more than a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon, which are €200 each, for his guests.
If you’ve got it you may as well flaunt it, even if Omiros Alexandrou would find such flashiness a trifle tasteless and provocative.
OVERJOYED to report that our former Ethnarch is not sitting at his political office sulking about losing the elections. On Wednesday he was one of the three ex-presidentes who attended the first National Council meeting under the comradely chairmanship of the new presidente.
His main contribution to the meeting was to enquire, which side had control of the 30 metres of the buffer zone running between Kykkos St and Ermou St on the Ledra St crossing. He said the agreement had not clarified this point. But who cares, apart from Tassos, who is in charge of 30 metres of land when everyone is allowed to use it and there is no soldier in sight. The guy should donate his brain to science after he’s gone.
FROM today we have decided to contribute to our government’s ineffective water-saving campaign by offering two water-saving tips each week. First, anyone travelling abroad must bring three or four 1.5-litre bottles of water on returning to the Republic – more if there is room in your suitcase. Second, we will repeat the advice, about when to flush the toilet, given in California when it experienced a drought. If it’s brown flush it down, if it’s yellow, let it mellow.
