OUR BUNGLING rulers were given a bit of a jolt by the public support offered to the “northern part of Cyprus” and Turkey’s action plan by Russian President Vladimir Putin, just a week after our Ethnarch’s triumphant Moscow visit, during which The Prez had clearly and persuasively explained our side’s positions to Mr Putin.
Not only did he not use inverted commas when mentioning the “northern part of Cyprus” in a response to a hack’s question, but, worse still, he referred to the Republic as “south Cyprus”!
He said: “We hope a compromise acceptable to north and south Cyprus will be found.”
Now if any lowly US or British official had referred to the Republic as ‘south Cyprus’, our fearless political clowns would be all over TV beating their breasts and calling for reprisals because the illegal regime was being equated to the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus. They would all be claiming that this was a conspiracy by the axis of evil aimed at upgrading the pseudo-state and, simultaneously, downgrading the status of the Republic.
But it was Putin, a friend of the plantation and a “man of principle”, according to our omniscient politicians, who stopped short of declaring him the new Nelson Mandela. Moscow had always been “steadfast in its support of principles”, declared Omirou, while the rest of the clowns reminded us of our “traditional ties with Moscow”.
The charmless under-Secretary to the President, Christodoulos Pashiardis, insisted that Putin had a “clear and principled position on the Cyprus problem”. The reference to “north Cyprus” was “purely geographical” and not political, he assured us, without telling us how he knew.
The Commissar attributed everything to a bad translation. He said he went online and checked the Russian text of what our “man of principle” had said and found that there was a mistake. The word “also” had been omitted from one of his sentences, which completely changed its meaning, said the Commissar.
With the missing “also” restored, it becomes crystal clear that Moscow had not abandoned its principled position. As for Putin, he often likes to speak in geographic rather than political terms, which is why he is often accused of being geographical with the truth.
THIS SHOULD in no way be taken as criticism of Putin, even though presenting him as a principled geography teacher is pushing the bounds of credibility. The guy was head of the KGB, an organisation that was not renowned for its adherence to principles and to respect of rights.
Russia may support us at the UN Security Council, but it also has strategic and economic interests that are served by a close co-operation with Turkey. Putin has called for the ending of the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, just like everyone else, and last week he had no problem issuing a thinly-veiled threat on the visa issue.
If we failed to lift our visa requirements for Russians, they would simply go through Turkey to the north for tourism, he warned. None of our leaders checked the internet to establish if these comments were badly translated. Weird how these comments came only a week after our Ethnarch’s successful visit to Moscow.
During his speech at an official banquet, the Chairman of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, said that tourism from Russia to both sides of the island would benefit the whole of Cyprus. He was immediately rebuked by an irritated Ethnarch, who said that it was official government policy to discourage tourists from going to the occupied north.
Putin had no trouble resorting to a bit of principled blackmail over the visas, showing the kind of contempt for our official policy and the feelings of the Greek Cypriot people that we only expected from the British Foreign Office.
THE VISA blackmail was not given any coverage by the palazzo-controlled media for the same reason that all the pro-government political parrots spent the last few days making excuses for Putin’s geographical comments.
If our government, that so rigidly follows a paranoid diplomatic policy based on the feelings of the people, is seen to have lost the support of Russia as well it will have no country on its side left except Greece.
And when you consider that even the Greek government’s patience with Tassos’ antics is wearing thin, then you know you are on the verge of attaining the international status of Cuba.
Hardly surprising, considering that our Ethnarch’s diplomatic philosophy is to attack anyone who does not tell him what he wants to hear. In the last few weeks our government has attacked the British Foreign Office over the Straw visit, the UN Secretariat over the aid to the Turkish Cypriots, the EU Enlargement Commissioner over his comments about the Turkish action plan and Primakov. The Yanks are not his greatest fans – even though he hasn’t attacked them in the last couple of weeks.
When it comes to diplomacy skills Tassos could single-handedly write the handbook on ‘How To Lose Support And Alienate Foreign Governments And International Organisations’. For a leader of a tin-pot country with no military, economic or political muscle, he is not doing badly if his objectives are to attain world notoriety and isolate the plantation.
BUT ALL is not lost, the inventor of many truths and government spokesman Giorgos Lillikas informed us on Friday that the French government was on our side! Lillikas said comments by France’s foreign minister about the need for Turkey to recognise the Republic, indicated a shift in the country’s foreign policy. These are the kind of myths we have been hearing from this master of political spin since he became spokesman.
His best one so far was that we would oppose Britain and the US acting as mediators in a new peace initiative because of a pro-Turkey bias that made them untrustworthy. We could get other members of the UN Security Council to take on this role, Lillikas told a radio show in all seriousness. Yes Georgie, Security Council nations are all lining up, just begging Kofi Annan to allow them to act as mediators in the Cyprob.
Of course, the more realistic scenario is that soon not even the US and Britain will want to have anything to with the Cyprob, but Lillikas does not deal with realities – his expertise is fantasy politics and fairytales.
THE NEW government myth-maker did not tell us how his meetings with Bill Gates and the Chairman of Microsoft International in Lisbon went this week. Before he left he made the following statement: “I do not want to create high expectations. I hope and wish that we will be able to forge a good co-operation with Microsoft in the field that interests us and which we have set as a priority that is in research and high technology.”
We have heard nothing since his return – not even if Gates shook his hand let alone discussed Lillikas’ grand high-tech ambitions for our plantation. It is unlikely Gates had much time for our commerce minister, considering this was a Microsoft government leaders forum and there would have been dozens of delegates angling for a five minutes of the great man’s time.
For Lillikas, it was enough to tell us impressionable natives of the plantation he is important enough to get a meeting with Bill Gates.
DESPITE Giorgos’ arrival as head of the Public Information Office, its propaganda has not become any subtler than before. The review of the ‘Turkish Press and Other Media’ on Friday 27 January, included the following titles:
“2. Mr Erdogan feels relaxed about Cyprus but Turkish troops continue to occupy EU territory and violate the human rights of EU citizens”
“3. Gul notes necessity of de facto steps in Cyprus. No mention of occupation troops”
“4. Press conference by Gul and Straw in Ankara. No ref
erence to Turkey’s occupation troops in Cyprus.”
SADLY, the miracle never happened last Sunday and I shall return to being non-believing Greek Orthodox. Marcos Baghdatis made a perfect start to his match, but in the end he bowed to the all-round superiority of Roger Federer.
Federer is, after all, the best player in the world and we should take some consolation from the fact that our much-less experienced Marcos rattled him in the first two sets.
Marcos was due to return to the plantation yesterday and everyone will be trying to cash in on his success and stardom. The Bank of Cyprus desperately wants to be his sponsor as do a host of other big companies. I hope he plays hard to get, messes them around and then demands a king’s ransom for the privilege to sponsor him.
Meanwhile, some Defence Ministry mandarin, reportedly prepared a proposal by which Marcos would be made a Second-Lieutenant and be exempted from doing military service. But any conscript could become a Second-Lieutenant without even playing in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament, so this was an insult rather than honour. If they wanted to give him an honorary army rank they should make him a colonel or a general.
THE NEWS infuriated the Ethnarch, whose minions informed the press that “all decisions would be taken after the President’s meeting with Baghdatis”.
“The president will discuss the matter (of his military service) with him.”
The message was clear – it is an imperial right to grant Baghdatis an exemption and the Ethnarch would exercise this privilege himself, after seen the plantation’s most famous son.
He could also ask Marcos, next time he is in a final and is asked to speak at the prize-giving ceremony, to mention the occupation of Cyprus and the need for a fair and just solution.
Last Sunday he was being watched by tens of millions of TV viewers all over the world when he made his speech and, as the PIO would say, there was “no reference to Turkey’s occupation troops in Cyprus”.
It was a great, missed opportunity to remind the world about the continuing violation of our human rights by Turkey.
TEACHERS did not disappoint us on Thursday when they voted on whether to accept the government’s proposal for the extension of the retirement age from 60 to 63. The majority – just over 60 per cent – put their personal interests above those of greater society and rejected the extension, which would have eased the strain put on public finances and the Social Insurance Fund by an ageing population.
Public spiritedness is not something our heavily unionised state school teachers have ever displayed. In fact they have also taught school-kids to put their personal interest above that of the society. The secondary school-kids’ union (yes, even teenagers are unionised on this plantation), the Pancyprian Co-Ordinating Committee of Students, was organising demos and protests, putting pressure on teachers to reject the extension!
The reason – graduates who wanted to enter the teaching profession would not find a job immediately. The Committee issued a statement after the vote, which said: “We are proud because we remained faithful to positions of principle, serving the interests of students and the new generation. In co-operation with university students’ movement and teachers who were in our camp we managed to send the correct message so as to defeat the anti-youth measure.”
I just cannot believe that spotty-faced 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds give a second’s thought about whether there will be a state teaching job for them when they graduate. If they do, they are not behaving like normal teenagers and we should consider calling in a few psychiatrists to treat them.
Normal teenagers are the ones who beat up their teachers, sexually harass classmates and show complete disrespect for authority. They do not have opinions about the retirement age of teachers. If our teenagers were normal, they would be supporting an extension of the retirement age to 70, just to piss their teachers off.
I SUSPECT most teenagers do possess the irreverent rock ‘n’ roll spirit and do not give a toss about unions, principled positions and correct messages. There are a few nerds who run the union and take their instructions from the commies of AKEL, who have complete control of student organisations. Even the rhetoric used by the Committee was Akelite.
The AKEL youth organisation, EDON, described the vote as a “vindication of the philosophy which takes into account social consequences, consequences for people rather than economic considerations and self interest.” Amen comrades.
In short, AKEL was using its underage puppets and its own youth group to fight a policy proposed by the government it belongs to and supports. The shameless opportunism of plantation commies knows no bounds.
And when pension payments for the elderly are decreased because the Social Insurance Fund will be running out of money, AKEL and its professional protesters will be organising demonstrations against the anti-elderly measures of the government.
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