WE WOULD like to wish a happy and healthy New Year to all our customers. We have omitted the adjective ‘prosperous’ from our wishes, in case anyone thought we were taking the piss or engaging in black humour. If there is one thing that is certain about 2013 it is that, for most people, it will be anything but prosperous.
On the plus side, after February the clique of incompetent, commie half-wits who have turned a once-thriving plantation into a wasteland will not be able to cause any more destruction as they will leave office. On the minus side, by March there could be nothing left to save for the successor of Tof the Terrible.
The outrage is that Tof will leave his job with a retirement bonus of 350 grand, an annual pension in excess of 60 grand and a government limo, while he will also be provided with bodyguards, a chauffeur and a secretary by the taxpayer. Kyproulla has always rewarded poor performance and failure very generously.
Still, I resent the fact that as a taxpayer I will be contributing to a five grand per month pension to a commie clown whose reckless stupidity has bankrupted the country, left tens of thousands of people jobless with zero prospects and reduced us to begging for money from the EU.
THE COMRADE, of course, had a different view of his pathetic presidency. Last Sunday, speaking to a commie gathering in Larnaca, he said: “These five years, under very difficult circumstances, we were responsible, both in the Cyprus issue and domestic policy, for achievements of exceptional significance. If only everyone in this country could say the same thing… we worked in such a way so our children and grandchildren would be proud.”
Three days later, during the vasilopitta-cutting ceremony at AKEL’s offices, it was evident that his condition had not improved. “We leave with our head held high and proud of our services to the Cypriot people for 90 years and for our services of the last five years.”
He did not give any examples of the achievements of exceptional significance and it is doubtful even he in this delusional state would count the blowing up of a brand new power station which caused the death of 13 people as one of them.
What he deserves to be proud of, even though I am sure he is not, is that he cut the wages and pensions of the public parasites by about 15 per cent. In short, he made the rich poorer, which must have satisfied his communist conscience, but in the process he also made the poor much poorer.
Without meaning to the comrade turned Kyproulla into the Cuba of the Mediterranean, but with a few more freedoms.
ARCHBISHOP Chrys, who is not an economist or a great mind, pointed out the poverty politics when he was called by Mega TV on Wednesday night to respond to the latest attack by Tof the Terrible. Chrys the not-so-meek said the comrade wanted to make the rich poorer but should have realised that when this happened “the poor will also become poorer.”
The spat was sparked by the failure of the government to send a representative to the New Year’s Day church service held by Chrys. The holy man described this behaviour as shameful and said the government “was for pitying.” The next day the vindictive comrade accused Chrys of belonging to the group of businessmen and bankers responsible for the mess the economy was in. “The Primate of the Church cannot be excluded from this group of entrepreneurs and bankers.”
Chrys has said and done a lot of stupid things in his career but destroying the economy was not one of them. Only one man has the right to take credit for this achievement of exceptional significance, even though his innate modesty does not allow him to do so.
DURING the cutting of the vasilopitta Tof the Terrible also expressed the wish that the troika would not insist on the privatisation of semi-governmental organisations when the memorandum was finalised because if it he would refuse to sign.
“I have a commitment to the party and to the programme of the government. I want to make this clear he said.” He is already plotting his escape route, happy to leave the signing of the memorandum he brought upon us to his successor.
But was it not the comrade and his cheerleaders who kept telling us that the government team’s supreme negotiating skills had saved the SGOs from privatisation? Were they lying? Of course they were. The memorandum, to which the comrade agreed, said that if the assistance fund was too high the SGOs would be privatised. So will he now go back on his agreement with the troika because of his commitment to the party?
As any self-respecting coward that proudly refuses to take responsibility for anything he will leave the signing of the memorandum to someone else.
IT WAS not only Chrys who pissed off our inadequate rulers last week. The former Governor of the Central Bank Athanasios Orphanides, the man AKEL decided should take the fall for the blameless comrade’s criminal incompetence, gave an interview to Sigma TV that had the comrades seething.
Orph responded to every lie uttered by the Akelite propaganda machine, rationally explaining all the mega blunders by the comrade which led to the state needing a bailout and debunking the commie myths about him, which most people had bought.
The situation could have been salvaged as late as last May if the government took the measures the finance minister had told the ECB would be taken. But Tof the Terrible vetoed the relatively mild measures Vasos Shiarly had prepared and less than a month later we asked for a bailout.
Having no answer, the government spokesman simply said that Orph had resorted to “the well-known lies and wretchedness” to the cover his responsibility for the banking crisis. He should keep quiet, Stef-Stef advised. Had anything of what he said been a lie, Stef-Stef would have taken great pleasure in pointing it out, but, strangely, he failed to do so.
AKEL does not need to provide proof when it declares someone a liar because it has been serving the Cypriot people for 90 years.
AKEL deputy and bon viveur Stavros Evagorou said that the party was considering filing a law-suit for defamation against Orph. This was not because Orph claimed Tof had personally interfered in his work demanding a favour for a specific businessman. Obviously that was not a lie. The party would sue because Orph claimed AKEL was immersed in corruption and everyone knew this to be untrue.
NOBEL PRIZE winner, professor Christoforos Pissarides, who has a weakness for publicity, also gave a TV interview last week but the show he chose to appear on was surprisingly low-brow.
He was a guest on Mega’s afternoon chat show, in a Barbie doll-house studio setting, hosted by one of the regulation blonde bimbos that dominate daytime TV. What was a Nobel winner doing on show that makes no secret of its mindless fluffiness? Apart from the presenter it also features three characters sitting behind desks making lame jokes.
They were removed when Pissarides was being interviewed and answering questions by callers, one of whom introduced himself as “a former classmate of your brother-in-law Makis Constantinides”. Pissarides, rather unwisely, even tried to answer a question about a possible hair cut of bank deposits, betraying a naivety that some really smart people have.
He ended up telling the caller, if she had 300 grand to open three accounts of 100 grand in three different banks as this amount was guaranteed by the government. But if someone had a deposit of a million euro he or she “should worry”, he said. Did it not occur to him that he could have started a bank run with his comments?
When a Nobel laureate goes on telly and says that there could be a hair cut of deposits, people are inclined to take the warning seriously.
PISSARIDES also made some very interesting revelations. Despite honouring him, the government never once asked him for advice about anything. Labour minister Sotiroulla, whose measures to fight unemployment increased the numbers of jobless, never thought it necessary to ask the professor, specialising in employment economics, for a meeting.
The government did not consider using his knowledge of the European Commission and the IMF, with which he had worked in the past, in the bailout talks. Instead we had Sotiroulla, Sylikiotis and Stef-Stef negotiating with the troika. The problem was that like Shiarly he was not an Akelite and therefore could not be trusted.
On the show, Pissarides said things that would have embarrassed the government – the delay in agreeing a bailout was a very big mistake; the banking crisis was not the only cause of the economy’s problems; blaming Orphanides for the crisis was unjustified; the failure to take measures to reduce the deficit promptly made things worse.
It was a good thing that no journalists saw the show because if they asked the spokesman about his criticism of the government, Stef Stef and AKEL might have to declare our Nobel laureate a liar, that should keep quiet.
THE WOBBLY thrown by the Egyptian Ambassador Menha Mahrous Bakhoum at Larnaca Airport last weekend when dutiful cops insisted that she went through a security check before going into the departure lounge provided some light relief in these miserable times.
Ms Bakhoun had a ‘do you know who I am’ tantrum when cops asked her to take off her boots at the security screening point and she refused. The cops refused to let her go through and after an exchange of words with a female cop who stood in front of her blocking her way, the ambassador gave the uppity cop a solid slap in the face. Other cops stepped in and one of them put Ms Bakhoun’s hands behind her back and led her away.
Sigma TV obtained the CCTV footage of the showdown and broadcast it on Thursday night. It also showed how the cops pushed around the relatives whom the ambassador was accompanying. The feisty ambassador, when she was taken to a private room at the airport, reportedly pulled the wig off a male officer but there was no video footage of this incident.
Our government, fearing the incident might affect Cyprus-Egypt relations, offered a groveling apology to the ambassador. Ms Bakhoun, however, did not apologise to the cop she slapped in the face for trying to do her job. And the thing is, the cop-attacker should have taken her boots off as she had been asked instead of throwing a diplomatic tantrum.
FORTY-TWO days left until the elections and just 53 (February 28) before Tof the Terrible leaves the palazzo del popolo with his head held high, proud of his achievements of excessive significance.
Cheers to all those achievements of excessive significance