THANK THE LORD, there is only one week to go for the municipal elections and after that we will have a year’s rest. We overdosed on elections this year, being subjected to three, which was great if you happened to be an election campaign junky, but for the rest of us, who have more conventional addictions such as the Cyprob, valium or zivania, it was like spending a year in hell.
First we had the parliamentary elections, which were contested by an unprecedented number of losers, competing for public attention in a campaign that dragged on for more than three months, which seemed like an eternity. Then we had the elections for Archbishop, the procedure of which needed six weeks to be completed and included two smaller elections within it, not to mention the campaigning.
And now we have the municipal elections, in which half the population of Cyprus appears to be standing, with 33 mayors, 400 municipal councillors, 300 mukhtars and some 1,200 village councillors to be elected. And they’re all promising to improve our quality of life, listen to us, satisfy our needs (including sexual ones), and more or less ensure that we wake up with a big smile every day.
A bit difficult to believe that people who, for the last month, have brutally wrecked our quality of life, turning us into homicidal, nervous wrecks, with their billboards, junk mail, adverts, pathetic declarations, grand promises and monopolising of the media, will somehow after December 17 drastically improve it.
Don’t know about anyone else, but this year has made me realise that democracy is greatly over-rated and that people living in Islamic republics are not as unlucky as we think. At least their quality of life is guaranteed, safe from colossally boring, pain-in-the-arse election campaigns and candidates who think they will make us happy because they will make the collection of our garbage more efficient.
ONLY IN CYPRUS could there be elections for occupied municipalities which produce mayors who do not have the power even to manage the garbage collection or road-sweeping. There are nine occupied municipalities, including Famagusta, Kyrenia and Morphou and they all have a mayor, or is it a pseudo-mayor?
The candidates for the non-existent municipalities, despite not being able to improve anybody’s quality of life, have been given an amazing level of air-time to explain what they will do if they were elected pseudo-mayors. Kyrenia mayoral candidates have appeared on both CyBC radio and TV shows to enlighten us about their grandiose plan.
On a radio show on Thursday, all four of them were in quandary, when one caller, who described himself an historian, censured them for not taking into account the fact that the Turkish Cypriots were, in fact, Greeks who had been forced to embrace Islam.
And how could the mayor of Kyrenia perform his duties adequately if he was not aware of this historical fact?
AT LEAST the mayor of Famagusta has some work to do on August 14. He speaks at the gathering in Dherynia to mark the fall of the town to the Turks and hands over the resolution demanding the return of Famagusta to its lawful inhabitants, to the UNFICYP officer in charge of the area. I doubt the resolution (there have been 30 so far) is ever sent
on to New York, because the city has still not been returned to its lawful inhabitants.
Despite the fact that this is a bit of pseudo-post, the campaign being waged by AKEL for its candidate, current mayor Yiannakis Skordis – the only candidate who wears his hair in a pony-tail – has been terribly vicious, probably because the pseudo-mayor has always come from its ranks. The party mouthpiece Haravghi has been mercilessly attacking the pony-tail’s opponent Alexis Galanos, who has a good chance of ending the AKEL monopoly.
Galanos, a former House President, is in a different class from the pony-tailed Skordis, and is pilloried daily by the paper for allegedly being a DISY candidate, who will deviously take DIKO votes. Meanwhile the two candidates have been bickering over who has better contacts abroad, as if they were contesting the post of foreign minister.
Skordis, in responding to Galanos’ jibe that he had better contacts abroad, said he had met many people abroad, boasting that in the last three years he had been on 27 trips – at the taxpayer’s expense – to promote the Famagusta and Cyprus case. Much good that did us, but it is how our officials always justify their trips abroad.
Now we know why anyone would want to be the pseudo mayor of a non-existent municipality – to see the world for free. For 27 all-expenses-paid holidays abroad, in five-star accommodation, plus travel allowance, over a three-year period, who would not want to be a pseudo-mayor? You would even be prepared to grow a pony-tail.
It would be a pity if Skordis were not re-elected, as he has already bought a set of Louis Vuitton suitcases in preparation for another five years as Famagusta tourist.
NICOSIA mayor Michalakis Zampelas also likes to promote the Cyprus case abroad – enlightening foreigners he meets on his travels about the last divided capital of Europe – even though he is in charge of a real municipality.
Despite his tireless efforts at promoting the cause abroad, Michalakis has been getting a lot of stick from the commies of Haravghi which, for our establishment, is the best praise any candidate can receive. We would have fully endorsed Zampelas’ re-election bid if it was not being championed so zealously by Loukis P’s Antenna TV. Antenna is the only station that publicises opinion polls, commissioned by Zampelas, showing Zampelas to be in the lead.
I am certain the station’s support has nothing to do with Michalakis’ manic efforts to close down the tavern, Oi Elladites, ignoring the fact there is an appeal against the municipality’s decision pending in court. Oi Elladites tavern, I hear, is very close to Loukis P’s house and the smoke from its charcoal fires often drifts into the TV magnate’s home.
ZANY ZAMP must be crazy, if he thinks that digging up busy parts of the capital and placing a sign reading ‘Another project of the Nicosia Municipality’ in front of the closed road is going to win him any votes. The road which leads into the old part of town via Paphos Gate has been closed to incoming traffic for almost two months now, causing big jams and inconvenience to drivers.
Every morning I go to work and see the sign, the last thing I feel is gratitude to or admiration for Zampelas, because not only do I have to go a longer way, but there are always long queues as all traffic going into the old part of town is diverted through Solomou Square. As far as I am concerned, it is another inconvenience caused by the Nicosia Municipality that diminishes my quality of life and encourages me to vote against the perpetrator, even if by so doing I would be following the diktats of AKEL.
SPEAKING of the commies, Haravghi’s municipal election propaganda remains as antiquated as always. On Friday, it had the following headline: “Association of England Trikomites backs Michalis Melas”. Melas is standing as pseudo-mukhtar candidate of the occupied Trikomo village. UK-based Trikomites support him because he “believes in principles and is fighting for the good of Trikomo and Trikomites”. How he is fighting for the good of Trikomo, they did not say. Has he built new roads and pavements, has he organised weekly garbage collections, or has been hurling hand grenades at the Turks living in Greek houses?
Yesterday’s edition reported that the popular organisations of Trikomo are also backing Melas. Meanwhile the popular organisations of Gypsou (do not know if it is occupied), according to the paper, “are backing Michalis Yiasoumi (Matsoukou)”.
THE FAREWELL letter to Kofi Annan, written by the bash-patriotism hustler and DIKO deputy Zacharias K
oulias, did not get the attention it merited. In the letter, Koulias vents all his frustration and anger against Annan. After listing all the injustices committed by Annan against the Greek Cypriots, he writes:
“Disgrace and shame to you, who from first citizen of the world have been transformed into a mercenary and porter serving the illegal interests of all criminal acts by Turkey against the Cyprus Republic, a member state of the UN.
“I imagine that all the blacks of the planet must have felt proud when you took up the post of UN Secretary-general. Now you are stepping down, you are leaving behind you black and pitch-black pages and these people must feel ashamed of you, your life and deeds and Secretary-general of the UN.
“PS: The reference to the black colour has nothing to do with your colour or your origins and I write this because as soon as some people in Cyprus read these lines they will go wild and accuse me of being a racist.”
We would never jump to such a conclusion, because, to be fair, he omitted to boast that “some of my best friends are black”, as a true racist would.
STRANGELY, none of the anti-racist groups that sprung up immediately after the attack on the Turkish Cypriot students at the English School, said anything about the letter, nor did they accuse Koulias of being a racist, which would have been perfectly justified.
They may have been afraid to take him on because he is a bit of nut-case and not as soft a target as the silly teenagers who attacked the TC kids. About three anti-racist groups, nobody had heard of before felt the need to hold public meetings to discuss what had happened at the English School.
This was a widely covered incident and taking a stand would raise the profile of the do-gooders, who are all vying for EU funds, from what I hear, to campaign against racism.
OUR ETHNARCH’S visit to China, as expected, proved a resounding success, with three co-operation agreements signed and plenty of sight-seeing done. In one of the official ceremonies, he expressed admiration for Chairman Mao and praised China’s unwavering principled stand on the Cyprus problem. In exchange, he pledged that Cyprus would continue to support the One-China principle and “recognise the People’s Republic of China as the only lawful representative of all the Chinese people.”
With us on its side, helping it in the EU, giving projects to Chinese companies, buying Chinese defence materials (as the Ethnarch reminded our Chinese friends in an interview, to the People’s Daily) and backing the One-China principle, President Hu Jintao can sleep easy at night.
ANY DOUBTS that Tassos has taken us back to the Makarios era were dispelled last week as the state broadcaster CyBC showed sugar-coated documentaries about Chinese culture and civilisation. It is the sort of tin-pot country practice we thought we had grown out of until Tassos began his great backward march. Believe it or not, the documentary did not mention anything about the violation of human rights and suppression of basic freedoms by the Chinese government. As long as the Chinese government supports respect for the human rights of the Greek Cypriots, it can violate the rights of its own people as much as it likes. We will not be complaining.
TASS NEWS agency should hire someone to give a few geography lessons to its staff. In a report it filed before the Ethnarch left for China, previewing the trip, it wrote: “In the evening he will leave for the Ganges dock, from which he will go on a sight-seeing tour on a boat.” The reporter had obviously not heard that the Ganges is in India and while it is a pretty long river it does not stretch all the way to Shanghai, the city in which our Ethnarch was to board his boat. Had the reporter never heard of the Yangtze River?
The following announcement was sent by a customer: “Apple Computer reported today that it has developed computer chips that can store and play music inside women’s breasts. This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.”
I WOULD like to repeat last week’s question because I have still to receive an answer. Has Michalis Ignatiou’s book about the US briberies of Greek Cypriots prior to the referendum been published yet, because it is still not available in any of the island’s bookshops and we are getting very close to Christmas? As nobody will tell us, could Michalis inform us in the next article he writes for Phileleftheros?
