LACK of measure has always been one of our strong points as a country. We can always be trusted to go over-the-top whether we are quarrelling, protesting or celebrating.
Given this inclination, nobody could have been surprised by the OTT welcome and celebrations held for our first-ever Olympic medal winner Pavlos Kontides and broadcast live by our state broadcaster. You’d have thought he had just liberated Kyrenia given the fanfare and the laurels – quite literally - placed on his head.
This is not meant in any way to diminish his amazing achievement of which we are all proud and for which we would like to congratulate him personally. This is a 22-year-old kid that took on the best in the world and finished second – a super feat by any standards.
But did it justify the fire engines at the airport spraying a water arc on the runway or a welcoming committee of the education minister, the Larnaca mayor, the Bishop of Kitium, Limassol municipal councilors and a host of sports officials?
The last time there was such a hero’s welcome it did not bring much luck to its subject. We gave the same treatment to Marcos Baghdatis after he became the first Cypriot to reach a grand slam final, the Australian Open final in 2006. He has not equalled this achievement since, plagued by injuries and poor form. Then again, this could be because there was priest in his welcoming committee.
ON FRIDAY Kontides attended a special ceremony at the palazzo where he was honoured by the comrade president who bestowed on him a Grand Cross of the Republic and thanked him for lifting our spirits.
He also lavished praised on the “historic and well-known Limassol family” of Kontides which “offered him pan-humanistic values and ideals at a time when these were being attacked”.
The family must be AKEL voters because how else would the comrade have known what values and ideals the parents gave their son. And he would never have a praised a family of DISY voters, because they teach their kids neo-liberal values and to be nasty to other people.
It was hardly surprising that comrade Tof has tried to reap some personal benefit from Kontides’ triumph, hoping that some of the Olympic champ’s glory and popularity would rub off on him at a time when nobody loves him. He did not hide his desire to be associated with Kontides’ historic achievement during Friday’s ceremony, but said “Glory belongs to the winners. Glory is yours. Tomorrow nobody will remember that under the presidency of so-and-so we had won a medal, but everyone will remember Pavlos Kontides the Olympic winner.”
The comrade should not take such a negative attitude. We will always remember that the only time Kyproulla won an Olympic medal was under the worst president in its history and will never forget to give him due credit for it.
PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin accepted an invitation from the comrade to visit Kyproulla a government announcement said, although the happy day has not yet been announced.
The invitation was conveyed during a “very warm and very positive” half-hour telephone conversation comrade Tof had with Putin on Monday during which they also discussed “the conditions of further economic co-operation between the two countries”.
There was no mention in the official announcement of the €5 billion loan the comrade has been begging for, presumably because Putin has no intention of giving it.
Asked about the loan the following day, charmless, apprentice government spokesman, Christos Christofides put the following spin on it: “What is important is for the procedure, we hope, to have a positive conclusion, but what I can say is that since discussions continue, apparently there has not been a negative response from the other side, at least at this stage.”
Government mouthpiece Haravghi, having faith in the sweet-talking comrade was more optimistic. “It is thought that after the warm conversation the two men had, the effort to secure a new loan from Russia will be successful.”
WHAT we were not told was why the comrade called Putin on the phone on Monday. Was he sitting in his office with nothing to do and thought: “Maybe I will call my friend Vladimir and ‘stress the timelessly close relations between the two countries and two peoples … and express my thanks for Russia’s continuous support for a comprehensive, viable and just solution of the Cyprus problem and particularly for her stance in the UN Security Council’.”
I suspect the reason he called was to make a grovelling apology for supporting the UN General Assembly resolution, approved three days earlier, which overwhelmingly condemned the Syrian government. Our potential lenders, Russia and China, voted against the resolution but our government could do no such thing. Now that it is in charge of the EU presidency it has to champion the EU’s position on Syria which is a bit different from that of the comrade’s friends.
I hope Putin showed understanding for his close ally’s predicament and forgave him during their very warm conversation.
AWARE that there would be no loan from Mother Russia, the comrade has turned his attention to our new-found friends the Chinese. Our mole at the plazzo informs us that he has been manically trying to arrange a visit to Beijing, hoping that the personal touch would persuade his hard-nosed Chinese comrades to lend us a few billion.
Christofides meanwhile has declared that support for the Russian loan was more or less a patriotic duty. Those, who wanted to borrow all our money from the troika, “instead of playing hide-and-seek, should come out and say these things boldly to the Cypriot people.”
The bungling idiots running the country have got into their heads that if we borrow less money from the troika it will impose less painful austerity measures or as the bright spark Christofides said, “the (bailout) terms are absolutely related with the amount (we need to borrow).”
STAYING on the subject of China you had to feel sorry for the director of the president’s diplomatic office Marios Ieronymides, who found a Chinese businessman Yang Qi to invest in Kyproulla and is now being pilloried by the press because he sat in on a couple of the meetings that discussed the project.
He was also attacked because his wife, a successful businesswoman in her own right, had been a director of Far Eastern Phoenix, the Chinese company that would have undertaken the old Larnaca airport project in collaboration with Hermes. She had been a director long before the airport project was thought up and stepped down when the deal was about to be signed.
Speaking on a radio show on Thursday morning, Ieronymides mentioned something that nobody picked up. He attended the meeting at which the deal was signed as he had accompanied his friend Yang Qi to Larnaca airport. When he got there, the chairman of Hermes, Nicos Shacolas, insisted that he stay for the signing.
Ieronymides told Trito radio show: “They insisted that I stayed. Ask Mr Shacolas, ask Mr Iacovou...” The presenter did not ask him which ‘Iacovou’ he was citing as a witness, because if it was who we suspect it was he had no business being at the signing either.
COULD Ieronymides have been referring to the rotund presidential commissioner, with the moustache, who is currently being paid 100 grand plus a year by the taxpayer to leak information to the press about the complete lack of progress of the technical committees?
And if it was him, in what capacity was he at the meeting? Was he there as a friend of Yang Qi, Shacolas or was he simply representing the interests of the Cyprus problem? Of course, it could have been another Iacovou, one who works for his living.
Then again the George Iacovou has been heard to boast that the taking over of the old airport by Yang Qi and turning it into a commercial centre was his idea. He may have been invited to the signing of the deal in March as the great mind who had up with the idea for the project.
AS WE are talking about directors of the president’s diplomatic office, nobody seems interested in Ieronymides’ predecessor Leonidas Pantelides, to whom the Polys Polyviou investigation into the Mari blast attributed neglect of duty.
According to the report he had not kept the president informed about the state of the munitions, despite being briefed by the military about the hazards. Pantelides, to the surprise of legal circles, was not among those charged by the attorney-general.
Not only this, but the president rewarded him for keeping him in the dark about the munitions containers, by appointing him permanent representative at our UN mission in Geneva, a posting all diplomats dream of. Some guys have all the luck.
MICHALIS Sarris, the ethical banker, was forced to resign as chairman of the Popular Bank, because the autocratic comrade wanted him out.
Sarris had committed several mistakes that angered our wise leader – he was on friendly terms with public enemy number one, the former Central Bank governor, and he did not subscribe to the government myth that we applied to the support mechanism exclusively because of the banks – and had to be ousted.
He is also a Tottenham Hotspur fan which was anathema to Akelites, all of whom are Arsenal supporters.
He was told to quit by the Central Bank Governor Professor Panicos, who informed Sarris that “this was also the position of the government.” As it was the position of the government, the independent state official agreed with it and was happy to act as the independent messenger of the comrade.
THE NEW chairman is Andreas Philippou, a former Central Bank employee in his seventies, who retired in 2003. A respected technocrat, he is unlikely to provide the dynamic leadership required by the fast-sinking bank, but the comrade probably considers him much easier to boss around than the strong-minded Sarris.
With Philippou in charge, there is no way the Popular will pursue the staff lay-offs and pay-cuts that Sarris was planning, because the great protector of the workers at the palazzo will not permit him to do such thing. He would rather they all lost their jobs than be blamed for pay-cuts and redundancies.
THE CAMPAIGN that our leading daily Phil has been conducting against the Turkish fish being clandestinely imported to the free areas bore results last week. A Turkish Cypriot, stopped by cops on the Pyla-Larnaca highway had 250kg of fish of Turkish nationality in his fridge-van.
The Turkish Cypriot admitted that he had not secured permission from the veterinary services of the Republic to bring the fish over, as is stipulated by the Green Line regulations. The driver claimed he did not go to the authorities because it was a Sunday and he could not wait another day for certification because the fish would have gone bad.
But what do the veterinary services actually do when the fish are taken to them? Do they test them for AIDS, mad cow disease, or bird flu? And when 200kg of fish need certification, do the services check every single fish before issuing the permission?
Meanwhile, the 250kg of fish confiscated were reportedly taken to the Kophinou incinerator and destroyed. What a waste.