I WAS OVERJOYED to see that Commissar Christofias’ holiday with his wife to China has been going fantastically well, with the old Stalinist proving an instant hit with his revisionist Chinese comrades.
Despite their ideological differences (the Commissar does not eat dog chow mein or crispy seaweed), the Chairman of the Standing Committee of 10th National People’s Congress, Wu Bang-Guo paid him the ultimate compliment, describing him as “a great friend of China”, who had “contributed significantly in the promotion of relations between the two countries”.
And where would China be today without the unwavering support of Cyprus on the issue of Taiwan, in all international fora? Still, it was nice to hear one Chinese official after the other express his gratitude for our support for China’s re-unification with Taiwan. As Christofias mentioned at his meetings, we were fellow sufferers as we also had to deal with a secessionist problem.
“The fate of Cyprus and China is basically similar and parallel,” said the Commissar. All the Chinese officials expressed their support for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of the Cyprus Republic… but not for Tibet’s, in which case China’s role was similar and parallel with Turkey’s role in Cyprus.
THE TITLES of some of the Chinese officials whom the Commissar met during his visit were fascinating. He was welcomed in Beijing by the Vice Chairman of the Law Committee of the National People’s Congress, Li Changan. He also met the Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee Wang Jiarui.
It was not only big-shot officials who warmed to the ‘great friend of China’, but also ordinary Chinese people. According to the TASS News Agency, which sent a reporter to cover the holiday, on his arrival at the Dolton Hotel in Changsha, in the Hunan province, the Commissar “was applauded by the staff and residents of the hotel”. Yes, the Commissar is a popular figure in the Hunan province as well.
At the end of the day, as the Commissar would say, it was a resoundingly successful visit and all those who said he went to China for a holiday have been exposed as malicious and mean-spirited. The Commissar explained: “At the end of the day, I think these visits are certainly not winter holidays, as some malicious people in Cyprus have described them, but another important contribution to the big construction of relations between China and Cyprus, which are rapidly developing.”
TASS NEWS Agency is rapidly developing into a den of Akelites, which may explain why it always sends a reporter to accompany the Commissar on his official holidays abroad. It never sent a reporter to cover visits abroad by the House President before the Commissar became House President because it was considered a waste of the taxpayers’ money.
This week the agency hired three deputy editors and two of the successful candidates were dyed in the wool Akelites. The third deputy editor had been working at the agency for years and could not have been ignored once she had applied for the job. She will be the only non-communist in a position of authority at the agency.
The chairman of Tass is an Akelite while the agency’s editor was an AKEL parliamentary candidate in the last elections. Not bad for a government that had vowed to put an end to rusfeti. In fairness, the rusfeti practised by the Ethnarch is a drop in the ocean (he has arranged jobs for a few koumbarous and friends) compared to what AKEL has been doing in the last four years. It is said that AKEL opposes the extension of the retirement age in the public service to 63 because it would reduce the scale of its rusfetological operations – there would be fewer positions to appoint Akelites to.
The crafty Ethnarch has given AKEL licence to carry out all the government rusfeti, knowing that this would guarantee him the comrades’ undying loyalty. As one politician memorably remarked, “Tassos has given the north to the Turks and the south to AKEL”.
BEING of a decidedly negative mindset, our Ethnarch prefers to practise ‘reverse rusfeti’, which involves preventing his critics from taking public posts. Everyone knows how he had refused, for 10 months, to ratify the appointment by the Tass News Agency board of Christoforos Chistoforou as the agency’s general manager. In the end he arbitrarily declared the appointment by the board as null and void.
Another victim of reverse rusfeti has been Dionysis Dionysiou, a secondary school teacher who was appointed by the Education Ministry to develop a website that would feature curriculum information for students. When the Ethnarch found out that his late friend Pefkios had given this cushy job to Dionysiou, who also writes a column in Politis every Sunday, he was livid; Dionysiou’s writing is often critical of our great leader.
The Ethnarch carried out an investigation to establish how one of his critics could have been give such a cushy job. After a few angry letters to ministry officials from the palazzo, Dionysiou was taken off the ministry project and was transferred to a technical school. At least the school he was sent to is in Nicosia, for which he must be grateful. If the Ethnarch had a sense of humour he would have transferred him to a village school in the Paphos district.
THE VILLAGERS of Lymbia are the latest group to accuse the cops of using excessive violence against them. The villagers blocked the road in the Koshi area (between Nicosia and Larnaca) last Thursday to protest against government plans to build a waste disposal plant, close to their village.
As always happens in these demos, the cops politely asked the demonstrators to clear the road and were ignored. When the cops tried to remove them physically the demonstrators resisted and scuffles broke out. Inevitably, the peace-loving, law-abiding villagers (like all demonstrators) had behaved like angels and accused the cops of using excessive violence.
The casualties of the scuffles told a different story – eight cops were treated for injuries and only two demonstrators. We can only conclude that the cops did not use adequate violence, let alone excessive.
A REPRESENTATIVE of the villagers and the police officer who was in charge of the operation both appeared on the CyBC news to talk about the scuffles. To illustrate the barbarity of the cops, the village rep said that they had removed the wooden leg of a disabled demonstrator and threw it in the fields. “We did not remove anyone’s wooden leg,” responded the cop adding: “The man you are referring to had removed his wooden leg himself and was hitting police officers with it.” I am inclined to believe the police version of events.
LAST WEEK we were wondering whether our foreign minister Giorgos Lillikas had lost his talent for telling a good lie. This week we can safely say that he has. Less than a week after his pathetic lie about the natural gas pipeline, which allowed Nicos Rolandis to publicly dismiss him as liar, he was caught lying yet again.
Asked about Rolandis’ accusations the self-regarding ‘bad-boy’ foreign minister said: “I have more serious things to do than respond to Mr Rolandis.” Technically speaking, this was a lie, because a few hours later he ran out of serious things to do and responded to Rolandis. His response featured another bad lie which was highlighted by the Mega TV news, which ran two contradictory statements made by Giorgos about the memorandum of understanding regarding natural gas pipelines signed by Rolandis and a US firm.
On February 1, Giorgos had said: “One of the first things I did (on becoming minister) was to cancel this memorandum of understanding, which included many other things that went against the interests of Cyprus.”
On February 6, he said: “I did not say that the memorandum was cancelled during my days. I mentioned that we were no
t bound by the agreement.”
You have to feel sorry for the man. All the serious things preying on his mind have impaired his ability to tell a decent lie.
SOON, not even Phileleftheros will be reporting the exclusive news Lillikas gives them. On Wednesday Phil published copies of the memorandum of understanding signed by Rolandis and repeated Lillikas’ accusations that US company Crest had been given privileged treatment by the Clerides government.
It also claimed that Crest was owned by the Bush family, which was factually incorrect – did Lillikas tell this to the paper? Was this non-event made a lead story as a favour to Lillikas? There was no real point having a lead story about a memorandum that became null and void four years ago and had never been pursued.
A COUPLE of days earlier Phil had another exclusive lead story, the source of which may have been Lillikas.
“International giants are expressing interest in becoming involved in explorations for the extraction of crude oil and natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean region,” reported the paper’s front-page lead. The “giant” companies interested were from France, Russia, China, the US, India, Brazil and Britain, reported the paper without naming a single one of them.
The question is, how did it know that the companies interested were “international giants” if it could not name a single one? Maybe the companies were “international dwarves”. Next time the paper runs a story given to it by the government it should demand a little more information, if only to make it more convincing. And if Lillikas is the source, it should demand to see documentation.
APPRENTICE socialist windbag and Rambo, Yiannakis Omirou may have come up with an answer to the problem posed by Turkey’s threat to take out any ship engaging in oil exploration in Cyprus’ seas. “We must strengthen our defence capability and keep upgrading the Dogma of the unified defence space with Greece.”
This will certainly make the Turks tone down their rhetoric. But did he ask Greece whether it wants to go to war with Turkey, because Cyprus had decided to conduct oil exploration? Greece has been avoiding oil exploration in the Aegean because of the Turks’ threats, so why would it go to war for Cyprus?
Let’s forget the myth of the unified defence space. But as part of the strengthening of our defence capability we could bring the Estragoshas from Crete. I am sure Yiannakis would be in favour of such move, but Greece might not be too keen to give us the keys to the
warehouse in which the missiles are being kept.
