COUNT Metternich of Cyprus diplomacy, bad-boy foreign minister Gorgos Lillikas failed spectacularly to safeguard the credibility of the EU on Monday as his unprincipled colleagues ignored his noble calls for a stand on principles and let off lightly the sultans of Ankara for their failure to open their ports to Cypriot traffic.
It was a black chapter (as Zacharias Koulias, who is not a racist, would say) in the history of the EU, with even our allegedly close ally France agreeing to the Turks escaping with a light slap on the wrist and without a reprimand. Perhaps there is some truth in the universal view expressed by our newspapers and politicians – that the Turk-loving Americans are running the EU through their Turk-adoring British agents.
As our establishment had astutely predicted, no deadline for implementing the protocol was imposed, as we had been demanding, because none of our partners was willing to give us ammunition to continue our nuisance strategy. The Commission would report on the issue at the end of each year, until 2009, after which Turkey would be given yet another extension.
The protocol pantomime faithfully followed the usual script, with us failing to block accession talks despite the fact none of our special, December discounted, demands were satisfied. Our demands for tougher sanctions and a deadline for implementation of the protocol may have not been satisfied but Lillikas, the government and its supporters were satisfied with the EU decision.
That is exactly what you would expect them to say. We didn’t think Lillikas would have a press conference with the Stones’ (I can’t get no) Satisfaction playing in the background to remind us that he had failed majestically. No politician advertises his inability to deliver what he had been promising or his failure to carry out his threats.
There is a very simple explanation for the idealistic, bad-boy’s failure to persuade his colleagues to support our principled stand on Monday. He was so far up on the moral high ground that none of his unprincipled, fellow foreign ministers, who were occupying the moral low ground, could hear what he was saying.
NOT EVERYONE bought the government’s ‘satisfaction’ rhetoric even though the bad boy is a much abler salesman than diplomat. Yet very few were willing to criticise Lillikas’ lilly-livered retreat, preferring to lay the blame on the duplicitous Brits who were following the Yanks’ instructions in dictating EU foreign policy and internal procedures with the aim to safeguarding Ankara’s interests.
At least this was the line taken by an historic editorial, last Sunday, in Phileleftheros, previewing Monday’s meeting. According to the paper, the EU was under the complete control of the US and “powerful member countries which had in the past given in, do not seem prepared to resist Ankara’s arbitrary behaviour, burdening the shoulders of small Cyprus with the weight of the resistance…
“Without seeking to, small Cyprus has found itself at the vanguard of the road (by necessity) the EU needs to follow to free itself from its US dependence.” Unfortunately, our heroic resistance to the Yanks, for the sake of the EU, was of the French type and we were unable to stop what Phileleftheros had warned would happen:
“Europe would move towards Turkification and not Turkey towards harmonisation with Europe,” if we failed to defend the EU against the “pressing US designs.” Phil should not be too dejected – we may have lost a battle but we have not lost the war.
THE ‘TURKIFICATION of Europe’ became the slogan week after Monday’s fiasco, with all the guests of the Lazaros patriotic radio show repeating it. “Instead of Turkey being Europeanised, EU has been Turkified,” lamented Professor Kostas Gouliamos, the radio show’s daily guest, who has a Lazaros-approved opinion about every issue under the ozone layer.
Gouliamos, who is not just a professor but also possesses a PhD, is the chair of the Management and Marketing Department at Cyprus College. He is one of those fanatical anti-US leftists who blame all the world’s wrongs on neo-liberalism, capitalists and globalisation. His disgust with capitalism has not stopped him being in charge of the ultimate capitalist courses – marketing and management. Only Gouliamos can tell us why, even though I suspect the US is to blame.
A question the good professor has not answered – I will be listening to the Lazaros show every morning, this week, in the hope that he eventually does – is the following: as we had failed to prevent the Turkification of the EU, should we not be writing to Brussels to cancel our membership?
THE BANK of Cyprus was back in the news this week after it was reported that the chairman of Greece’s Bank of Piraeus, Michalis Sallas, had written to the BofC board asking it for a meeting to discuss the possible merger of the two banks.
It was the sort of cowboy behaviour you’d associate with a vegetable wholesaler not with a bank chairman but it appears the arrogance of Greek bankers knows no bounds when they are dealing with us dumb, hillbilly Cypriots. Publicising his letter and threatening to sell off the BofP’s 8.2 per cent stake in the BofC if the latter did not agree to discuss a merger, was crude blackmail.
In a country with proper regulatory authorities, Sallas would not have dared resort to these cowboy tactics because he would have been in big trouble for knowingly affecting share prices. And the funny thing is that the guy has not even put his merger proposals on paper for discussion with the BofC. He has used the media to turn the screw on the BofC without bothering to discuss whether there is scope for co-operation and what form this co-operation would take.
The BofC board on Wednesday rejected the offer of a meeting, politely telling Sallas to ‘F’ off. For once, it had made the right decision – Sallas can find some other mugs to force to go into business with him.
THE BOSS of the bank employees’ union ETYK, Loizos Hadjicostis, complained that the BofC board had kept its employees in the dark about the proposed merger and staff had a right to know what was going on. The man’s audacity compares favourably with that of Sallas. Hadjicostis is an employee of the National Bank of Greece and has recently been appointed a member of the board of Laiki. Only a complete moron and Hadjicostis would expect the BofC to brief a Laiki director about its future plans so that its staff could know what was going on!
ADVERTISING company bosses announced on Friday that they would not be tendering for any contracts of ministries and state corporations until steps were taken to introduce transparency in tender procedures.
Advertisers were livid after the £1 million contract for the campaign to promote the euro was awarded to little-known company, Epistele Communications and Media, which they claimed lacked the expertise to handle such a big campaign. Epistele had submitted a tender together with PR firm, Action, and landed the contract.
Three companies that had also tendered have filed official objections but the Tenders’ Review Board upheld the decision on Wednesday. Two of the companies had also secured interim orders to prevent the signing of the contract for a month. Mystery surrounds Epistele, a relatively new company which has also landed a CTO media-booking contract worth eight million bananas.
Who were these guys landing the lucrative state contracts? Most advertisers are convinced, although they have no evidence, that Epistele is a front for Marketway, the Lillikas family’s agency which, by sheer coincidence, has been winning the lion’s share of public advertising contracts since the bad-boy became a minister. Unable to take any more public contracts as Marketway because there would be accusations of corruption, Epistele was set up to land the r
est, claim advertising industry insiders.
Marketway was one of the three companies that filed a complaint against Epistele. “It was a smokescreen,” insisted a veteran advertiser, although he was unable to provide any evidence to support his theory.
A RUMOUR doing the rounds is that the Epistele tender included a proposal to use our tennis superstar Marcos Baghdatis to promote the euro. It later transpired that Baghdatis had not even been consulted, let alone agreed to a fee for leading the campaign. When this point was put to an official, dealing with the tender, his response was, “if Baghdatis will not do it, they will find someone else.” Maybe they will get Roger Federer if Baghdatis refuses to do it or wants too much money.
What remains to be seen now is how long the advertising agencies will keep their ban on tenders for public contracts in place. The ban seems a self-defeating measure as it would allow Epistele, which is not a member of the ad agencies association, to win all the state contracts without any competition.
WILL the Central Bank invite tenders for its euro campaign or will it give the contract to the advertising agency it used to advertise government bonds? The euro campaign which caused the outcry was the Finance Ministry’s but the Central Bank will carry out one as well. In the case of the government bonds, the Central Bank gave the campaign contract to Marketway without inviting tenders from any other company. If it does the same for the much more lucrative euro campaign it is doubtful that Mrs Lillikas would be filing a complaint against the procedure followed.
A DIPLOMATIC incident between the two superpowers was narrowly averted during the Ethnarch’s visit to China after the Phil photographer, who was on the trip, suffered a small mishap while taking pictures at the Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai. The Ethnarch visited the garden, which is more than 400 years old having been completed in 1577, with his entourage of journalists.
At one point a loud crack was heard and as members of the entourage turned back, they saw the Phil photographer hitting the ground. He had climbed onto one of the ancient trees (some are 300 years old) to take a picture of the Ethnarch and managed to crack it in half before tumbling to the ground. He escaped unhurt but the Ethnarch’s hosts were not very happy and made their feelings felt. Our Ethnarch had to use all his charm to prevent a diplomatic crisis, which would have been disastrous because it could have led to Cyprus losing China’s support at the UN Security Council.
SPEAKING of hacks, we have noticed that the intellectually challenged, AKELite hack who wears white socks, Yiannakis Nikolaou, is no longer the Ethnarch’s favourite journalist at the state propaganda corporation. Nikolaou no longer accompanies the Ethnarch on his trips abroad.
This sacred responsibility has been given to hackette Stella Michael, who worships the Ethnarch even more devoutly than Yiannakis. During the China trip, Stella felt hurt after the Ethnarch responded rather abruptly to her questions. The following day she went up to him, in front of everyone, and told him that she had been upset by the way he had responded to her questions.
Our Ethnarch showed his humanity by telling Stella that it was all a misunderstanding and that he really respected her work and appreciated everything she did for the country. He even stood next to her and they had their picture taken together by the Phil photographer, who caused no damage this time.
IF READERS want any tips about whom to vote for in today’s municipal elections we will not disappoint them. We do not intend to write down all the mayoral candidates we recommend but there is a very simple rule you can follow. Check which of the candidates is being backed by the communist party AKEL and then vote for the other person.
The Stalinist, dirty tactics employed by AKEL against Alexis Galanos, who is candidate for the Famagusta mayorship, deserve to be punished. In the last two weeks the commies have been doing nothing else but dishing dirt at Galanos.
His company had been involved, they alleged, in some devious dealings regarding the importing of sugar (a bit rich coming from a party that elected president a man who helped Milosevic steal billions from the Serbian people), he had rarely attended events for Famagusta (can you blame him?), he wanted to get a piece of the action from the 4.5 billion pounds that would be spent for the rebuilding of Famagusta (they did not tell us when the rebuilding would start) and, worst of all, he had the support of Famagusta businessmen. AKEL use the word ‘businessman’ as a synonym for criminal. Do businessmen not have the right to vote?
AKEL’s hatred is the best recommendation for any candidate as far as our establishment is concerned. And if you are not convinced by this water-tight argument, then just think the alternative to Galanos, the AKEL candidate, Yiannakis Skordis has a pony-tail. Do we really want Famagusta to be represented abroad by a middle-aged communist with a pony-tail?
NICOSIA is not so easy, because even if you exclude the AKEL candidate there are still three others to choose from, Nicos, Anna and Michalakis. Who you choose out of those three is your business but whoever is elected, I hope he or she gives priority to the completion of the road works at Paphos Gate because I am fed up of driving to work through bloody Solomou Square.
