By Patroclos
THE COFFEESHOP, as its regular customers know, had given its full backing to the presidential candidacy of Nik, naively believing that he would provide the strong and decisive leadership the country was crying out for after five years of an incompetent commie administration run by a village idiot.
It now finds itself in the embarrassing position of having to confess that it had been completely wrong in claiming Nik would be a strong and fearless leader prepared to clash with the unions, parties and other interest groups in order to move the country forward, maybe even help it mature.
Nik has turned out to be a marginal improvement on his inept predecessor, but in the end our establishment must be blamed for having such unjustified high hopes and expectations of him. He is after all a product of the Kyproulla political system that churns out petty-minded populists by the dozen.
At least there were mitigating circumstances for backing him – the alternative candidates were the AKEL puppet Malas and the Olympic demagogue Lillikas. Of the three, Nik was undoubtedly the least dangerous, but that is all our establishment can say in it defence.
THERE is a very good reason why all our presidents are such disappointments. As soon as they are elected they start work on securing a second term, pandering to interest groups, telling people what they want to hear, putting off difficult decisions and wasting the taxpayer’s money on crude vote-buying scams.
Tof bankrupted the state doing all this and Nik would have been no different if the comrade had left some money in the kitty. But Nik still found funds to give permanent jobs to 500 contract teachers that state schools did not need and hire a couple of hundred officers for the National Guard.
Should we mention how he has been buttering up public parasites, extolling their ‘sacrifices’ and assuring they would not be asked to make any more sacrifices. Only a president working on his re-election feels obliged to keep the blood-suckers of the public sector sweet, three months into his term.
But the best illustration of their craving for a second term is the way they handle the Cyprob. Before being elected they claim they would work relentlessly for a solution, but as soon as they sit their bum on the presidential chair their sense of urgency automatically disappears. A solution is a threat to their presidency and therefore has to be avoided at all costs.
The Ethnarch fought against it while Tof resorted to delaying tactics; Nik is following the comrade’s tactics.
If Kyproulla is ever to have a president that puts the interest of the country above his re-election, the constitution must be amended to allow only one presidential term per person.
AT THE start of the week it was reported that the government was considering taxing the retirement bonus all public parasites receive. There was disquiet among the leech population and it turned into fury when finance minister Haris Georgiades admitted that the government was considering such a possibility.
Self-pitying union bosses took turns to appear on the morning radio shows to cry about the latest injustice against their long-suffering members who were once again being asked to make sacrifices.
By Friday a united front of all parasites – teachers, army officers, cops, school inspectors, nurses, municipal employees and uncivil servants – was formed under Glafcos Hadjiklamouris and a one-day strike was called for the following Friday.
The poor overworked parasites needed a long weekend, especially the teachers whose two-month holiday had only ended a few days ago. The National Guard secured an assurance from the Turkish occupation troops that there would be no military hostilities on Friday so its members could also enjoy the long weekend.
HADJIKLAMOURIS, who had been keeping a low profile of late, was back at his best, accusing Haris of “provocatively targeting” the poor parasites and giving lessons in law.
“The state cannot deceive its citizens and when it offers something it cannot revoke its offer at a later date, if this has formed a key part of the person’s decision to work in the public sector,” he pontificated. And I foolishly thought that people decide to work in the public sector in order to serve the public.
A teaching union boss repeated the old tune about the need for the government to clamp down on the tax cheats instead of trying to raise money from the poor parasites. This was a bit unfortunate as he was defending his members’ privilege not to pay tax on pay-offs of 200 or 300 grand.
There is justification for not paying tax on the retirement bonus as it is revenue from legalised theft of the state. The parasites contribute nothing from their big salaries towards this bonus which is given to them because the thieving unions demanded it many years ago and the politicians approved it because this allowed them to collect a retirement bonus as well.
AS SOON as the unions started moaning and threatening strikes the government went on the defensive. Gormless government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides – on instructions from Nik the strong leader – started back-pedalling, claiming there was no such decision and that the matter would be discussed at a meeting of the finance minister and union bosses this week.
It was very revealing that the union bosses did not attack Prez Nik about the proposal, all directing their fire at the hapless Haris. Nik was happy to hang Haris out dry rather than take the flak. On Friday Nik was on the phone to union bosses telling them not to worry and assuring them that the bonus would not be taxed, because he is already thinking about a second term and he could not alienate powerful unions.
What he did not tell them was that he had personally agreed with the Troika to tax the retirement bonus of the parasites as an alternative to the Troikans’ suggestion for an additional €100 million cut in state spending. The state budget for 2015 is currently being prepared and the provision for the taxation must be included.
Of course the provision would have been slipped in sneakily by the horrible Haris without our parasite-loving prez knowing anything about it.
THIS behaviour highlights the similarities of Nik and Tof, who also liked to pull the carpet from under his finance minister’s feet. We still remember when Vassos Shiarly was to meet the unions to discuss changes to CoLA and the comrade ordered his spokesman to announce that the meeting would not be taking place because there was no such issue for the government.
And now there is no issue of taxing the bonus for the government, only for the finance minister. Haris was also left out on a limb by his boss when the discussions about the foreclosures bill were taking place at the presidential palace with the party leaders. Haris would mention that the Troika would not approve of the party leaders’ proposals but Nik would ignore him and side with the populists.
Nobody knows how much longer Haris will last in his post, but he has become everyone’s favourite target, including DISY’s. And his boss is using him as the official government scapegoat.
NIK’S thespian qualities were displayed last Sunday when he announced that he would seek contacts at high EU level to ask for a show of understanding for domestic sensitivities. He was referring to the laws passed by the parties the previous day, rendering the foreclosures law they had also approved a dead letter.
He knew there was no chance anyone would show understanding, but he decided to continue the theatre, leaving the thankless task of speaking honestly and antagonising the parties in the process, to the hated Haris, who made it clear there was no way the Eurogroup would release the sixth tranche of financial assistance. And he was proved right.
Sorry that we could not keep this a foreclosures-free zone for a second week running.
THE EUPHORIA of the parties over their genius move to approve laws that would prevent the implementation of the foreclosures bill did not last long. It was punctured by the Troikans 48 hours later. Prez Nik’s high-level EU contacts obviously did not have the desired result.
Ethnarch Junior, as leader of the courageous party resistance to the Troika, attacked the government after it became obvious that Nik would send four of the parties’ laws to the Supreme Court. But the Strakka prince reserved most of his venom for Haris, disparaging him for being ‘alarmist’ in talking about the consequences of not receiving the next tranche of assistance from the Troika.
This is the same Junior who has been engaging in full-on alarmism for the last month, claiming that the foreclosures bill would result in thousands being kicked out of their houses, small businesses losing their premises and citizens living on the streets.
SPEAKING of alarmism, Yiorkos Lillikas also showed he was as good as Junior at it. He warned that “the issue of the NPL would lead to a plundering of the properties of citizens, possibly worse than that of the Turkish invasion (sic).”
He also blamed Haris for being ‘aligned with the Troika’ instead of defending the interests of Kyproulla, as defined by Lillikas and Junior, at the Eurogroup.
THE OTHER brave resistance fighter, House president and EDEK chief Yiannakis Omirou arrived at the presidential palace on Tuesday evening demanding to see Nik.
He was shaken and not his usual confident self. He had heard the news that the parties’ laws were unacceptable to the Troika and was in a panic wanting to know what the government’s plans were. After seeing Nik, who stupidly calmed him down, telling him that the Eurogroup would give us the chance to put things right, Omirou regained his swagger.
An hour after he left the palace, EDEK issued a defiant statement declaring that it would never give in to the diktats of the Troika neo-colonialists and keep defending the interests of the Cypriot people.
WEEKLY paper Kathimerini made a big song and dance out of its discovery that the daughter of Central Bank Governor Chrystalla Georghadji was employed at a law office that had as its client the notorious banker Andreas Vgenopoulos, who faced a criminal investigation for his role in the collapse of Laiki Bank.
This was a glaring conflict of interest banged on the paper, as sensitive information at the Central Bank could be passed on to the law office representing Vgenopoulos. The law office belongs to the former husband of the Governor – they have been separated for 10 years – and the daughter started to work there before Crytsal’s appointment as governor.
The paper’s editor-in-chief Andreas Paraschos initiated a zealous campaign against Crystal demanding an explanation from the Attorney-General and receiving one. There is another conflict of interest that the paper, despite its sensitivity to such issues, appears to have ignored. The big shot Limassol lawyer Andreas Neocleous, who has been representing Laiki since its resolution, has sued Laiki because of a dispute over his personal deposits at the bank. He is using another law firm to sue the bank that he represents. Kathimerini showed no interest in this conflict of interest because Neocleous is a big backer of the paper.
THE MAIN story on the CyBC radio news yesterday morning was the following: “Despite the upgrading of the solution of the Cyprus problem to a ‘strategic priority for the UN and the international community’, the UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon, in his annual report to the UN General Assembly, avoided making any mention to the effort he is making on the matter.”
Riveting news. We were also told that the 80-page report apart from dealing with Syria, Gaza and the Ukraine devoted much space to “objectives of the millennium and to climate change.” Surely climate change is not as important as the strategic priority of the UN.
There can be only person to blame for this downgrading of the Cyprob’s importance – Haris.