"At last Wednesday’s meeting, which lasted five hours, Tof and Ero discussed territory. We can reveal today what happened at the meeting. For the first half hour the two leaders and their entourages exchanged social pleasantries in the foyer. Then they proceeded to the meeting room where Tof read out a document with his positions. This lasted 30 minutes. Then, Ero needed about 28 minutes to read out the document with his positions."
"With the reading out of the way, the two leaders had to withdraw to their private rooms, with their respective advisors, to discuss the content of the document submitted by the other side. Big Bad Al gave the two 45 minutes to do this, but the comrade was unhappy, insisting that he needed an hour. He was granted his wish, but being a slow reader did not emerge from his quarters until an hour and 20 minutes later."
"And then it was time for lunch. Once they had finished lunch, Yiorkos Iacovou made a ground-breaking suggestion. “Why don’t we have a coffee,” he asked. This was considered a brilliant idea as it would prevent anyone requesting time for a siesta."
"After the coffee they returned to the meeting room, talked intensively about the proposals for 20 minutes and then stopped, because they had to discuss what the UN would tell the media about the meeting. This sorted, the two leaders, drained and exhausted by the intensity of the five-hour procedure, went home, content that they had added another small brick to the slow but steady building of the bi-zonal, bi-communal federation."
"And then it was time for lunch. Once they had finished lunch, Yiorkos Iacovou made a ground-breaking suggestion. “Why don’t we have a coffee,” he asked. This was considered a brilliant idea as it would prevent anyone requesting time for a siesta."
"After the coffee they returned to the meeting room, talked intensively about the proposals for 20 minutes and then stopped, because they had to discuss what the UN would tell the media about the meeting. This sorted, the two leaders, drained and exhausted by the intensity of the five-hour procedure, went home, content that they had added another small brick to the slow but steady building of the bi-zonal, bi-communal federation."
I THINK we owe the one-man investigative committee and Charles Laughton lookalike, who was appointed by the comrade president to find out which morons were politically responsible for the Mari blast, a mild apology. This was not imposed on us by a malignant lawyer, but is voluntary.
When Polys Polyviou was appointed this one-man investigative committee, our establishment laughed at the decision and concluded that “nobody could muddy the waters and confuse people with his findings better than a smart and experienced lawyer... who are experts at complicating the most straightforward and clear-cut issue.”
Instead, the way he has been conducting the investigation, which begun on Monday and was open to the public, suggest he will show no favours to anyone. He has showed an admirable determination to get to the bottom of things rather than to confuse anyone, which is why we felt the mild apology was in order.
Pol Pol, who had read all the documentation and asked the right questions, lay into his guests, picking up the holes and inconsistencies in their answers. And once he established what mistakes were made, he gave the official under questioning, a brief and patronising lesson on how a sensible person would have acted under the circumstances.
On Friday, he asked foreign ministry official, Costas Miltiades how long he had been serving at the foreign ministry and was told 20 years. “And you are still sane?” asked Pol Pol disdainfully. It is these little touches that assure us that the committee may do a good job.
RESPONDING to one of Marcos Kyprianou’s answers, Pol Pol remarked that “the average citizen, who considers the government unitary, could not but be disappointed”. Now this comment was not meant to be humorous, but one had to laugh.
Since when can a scion of old money, educated at Oxford and Princeton, a big-shot lawyer of the rich and powerful, locked away in his oak-panelled offices, know what the average citizen thinks? How many times a year does Pol Pol talk to the average citizen?
My guess is not more than five otherwise he would not have such a high regard for the average citizen’s political thinking and claim Mr and Mrs Average were disappointed because the government was not unitary.
As an average citizen, I can safely say that I found it very easy not to feel the slightest bit disappointed when I heard Marcos’ admission.
SO FAR, apart from revealing that our government was not unitary, the investigation has been corroborating what we knew all along - that the government decided to keep the cargo here, refusing to co-operate with our EU allies and the UN, because the comrade president wanted to keep his fascist dictator chums in Syria and Iran happy and at the same time snub the hated Yanks and the EU.
And the pretext was the Cyprob - the fear of recognition of the pseudo-state, according to Marcos, by the comrade’s friends. The rather populist Pol Pol embarked on another didactic rant when he heard this. “The bugbear of recognition of the pseudo-state by Syria and disreputable states of this type led to political distortions,” he decreed.
Will he raise the issue tomorrow when questioning the comrade president, the man who was politically responsible for the government sucking up to Syria and Iran? Tomorrow provides Pol Pol’s big test as he will be questioning the guy who appointed him and urged him to investigate everyone including the president.
Will PolyP be commenting on the comrade’s answers, telling him that the average village idiot would have handled the issue of the containers with more intelligence than the government?
WHAT IS really incredible is that the comrade has agreed to appear before the committee.
With so much damning evidence - a document published yesterday showed that he had been informed about the dangers posed by the container a year before the blast by the head of his diplomatic office - does he believe he will be able to convince anyone that he had no responsibility for what happened.
Even more incredible is that his associates have been telling hacks that they were confident their boss would emerge from the questioning smelling of roses. Is the guy so deluded, or will he play the humble man of people and shed a few tears in order to win the sympathy of his appointee and the public?
It remains to be seen, but I suspect that agreeing to appear before the committee might be as colossal an error of judgement by the comrade as insisting on keeping the munitions containers in Kyproulla and appointing Pol Pol as a one-man committee and giving him a free rein. Then again, his pitiful lack of judgement has proved the strongest quality he has brought to the presidency.
THE INTENISFIED talks, we are happy to report, are no longer moving at snail’s pace. The two leaders have heeded Ban Ki-moon and upped the tempo to a turtle’s pace according to talks’ insiders who wished to remain anonymous.
At last Wednesday’s meeting, which lasted five hours, Tof and Ero discussed territory. We can reveal today what happened at the meeting. For the first half hour the two leaders and their entourages exchanged social pleasantries in the foyer. Then they proceeded to the meeting room where Tof read out a document with his positions. This lasted 30 minutes. Then, Ero needed about 28 minutes to read out the document with his positions.
With the reading out of the way, the two leaders had to withdraw to their private rooms, with their respective advisors, to discuss the content of the document submitted by the other side. Big Bad Al gave the two 45 minutes to do this, but the comrade was unhappy, insisting that he needed an hour. He was granted his wish, but being a slow reader did not emerge from his quarters until an hour and 20 minutes later.
And then it was time for lunch. Once they had finished lunch, Yiorkos Iacovou made a ground-breaking suggestion. “Why don’t we have a coffee,” he asked. This was considered a brilliant idea as it would prevent anyone requesting time for a siesta.
After the coffee they returned to the meeting room, talked intensively about the proposals for 20 minutes and then stopped, because they had to discuss what the UN would tell the media about the meeting. This sorted, the two leaders, drained and exhausted by the intensity of the five-hour procedure, went home, content that they had added another small brick to the slow but steady building of the bi-zonal, bi-communal federation.
THE LATEST desperate attempt to salvage something of his battered reputation, by the comrade may give rise to a new diplomatic practice - one state leader sending another a ‘happy birthday message’.
Earlier this week the comrade turned 65 and he received birthday wishes from no less than three respected leaders - Dmitri Medvedev, Angel Merkel and Karolos Papoulias. How did they know that it was the Dikomo darling’s birthday?
The government in Nicosia, apparently informed the embassies of Russia, Germany and Greece here, and implored them to send a birthday message, as the comrade was feeling a bit down and needed cheering up. They all obliged, taking part in this crude farce, with gushing messages that the government passed on the media.
Merkel’s message, among other idiocies, said: “During your entire political career and especially as president, you served your country and Europe in the best possible way.” Well, her secretary had to say something nice about the birthday boy, as she did not have time to buy him a present.
WHAT ON earth was our foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulli doing attending the conference for Libya in Paris? This was a donors’ conference anyway and we are in no position to donate funds for the rebuilding of Libya when we cannot afford to rebuild the power station we blew up.
In fact, the French organisers of the conference had not bothered to invite Kyproulla, prompting Erato to complain and demand an invitation. The organisers told Erato that there was no point inviting us as we had not recognised the rebel government, remaining loyal to Mad-dog Gaddafi. This prompted our government to announce that we recognised the new Libyan government.
The organisers may also have remembered that we had snubbed the first conference on Libya at the start of the year, our foreign minister not even replying to the invitation, while our government condemned the NATO air strikes. This could be the reason President Sarkozy, in a show of pettiness, refused to send his birthday wishes to our leader.
BELEAGUERED Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would be pleased to know that he does not only enjoy our president’s unstinting support. Archbishop Chrys is also a big fan of the ruthless Syrian dictator, because he was nice to Christians.
He expressed his admiration for Assad, while at a conference of Orthodox Church leaders in Istanbul and was asked if he was worried about the dominance of extremists in Syria. He said: “At present there is a government that is low-key, respects citizens, minorities and the Christians there. If the opposing side prevails, if Assad falls, I fear that the Christians would leave Syria.”
MEGA TV and the Church, I hear, have agreed on a velvet divorce and the Broadcasting Authority has already been informed about the separation. We do not know if the Church will bring back the indescribably boring Logos TV, but Mega’s Greek owners have decided they want nothing to do with Archbishop Chrys.
The decision for the divorce was taken after Chrys served the station’s news bosses with an ultimatum. He demanded that he was given the right to decide what news was reported on the station’s main TV news show and the order in which the stories would be presented. In short, he wanted to be news boss. The Church had the majority holding in the company that run the station and could do what he liked, he argued.
The Greeks, to their credit told him to go to hell. What serious news organisation would want some ignorant priest who believes Assad respects his citizens running its news department? Head honchos from Mega are currently looking for other partners to carry on broadcasting in Kyproulla.
WE WERE a bit too kind to the new finance minister Kikis Kazamias last week. The guy is behaving as just another poodle of the union bosses, begging them to make a few tiny concessions so that the government can claim it was taking measures for the economy. The begging of the last few days did not yield any results but it is set to continue this week. When he is back at his office he should ask one of his flunkeys to means-test those collecting the ‘polyteknos’ (family with more than three children) state assistance, because the taxpayer has been paying welfare to a fabulously wealthy Russian oligarch, who has Cypriot citizenship.
The Russian had wanted to buy a 12-seater vehicle for private use – to take his family and visiting friends on excursion - and despite appealing to a host of government departments he was told that he was not eligible to own such a car. Licences for such cars were given only for commercial use. No matter how hard his representatives argued with officials the answer was negative; officials feared that the owners of the 12-seater vehicles would protest that the oligarch would use his car to take away business from them.
Then someone had the idea that the oligarch, who has a large family, could apply for a 12-seater vehicle as a ‘polyteknos’, which he was. He applied and was immediately given the required licence to purchase the 12-seater. A couple of months later, he also started receiving a monthly cheque from the state.
He did not have a clue what it was for and asked his auditors to investigate. They established that the billionaire Russian was being given cash assistance from the state for being a ‘polyteknos’, without ever applying for welfare. When it comes to wasting our money nobody could accuse our state services of being inefficient.
