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Tales from the Coffeeshop: Trading fatherhood claims for Gesy

ΠτΔ – Εγκαίνια Μνημείου Εθελοντή //
Prez Nik keeping the grey hairs and the health system under his control

FATHER of Gesy and independent presidential candidate hopeful Giorgos Pamborides suffered a couple of blows below the belt on Thursday thrown by his ungrateful former boss Prez Nik during an interview he gave to his fellow hair-dye user Yiannis Kareklas on Sigma TV.

The interview, conducted in the presidential office, offered us the impressive spectacle of two men in their seventies both with a full head of hair and without a single white hair between. Sorry for the digression, but my envy got the better of me.

Nik took great exception to Pamborides posing as the man who made Gesy happen and claimed the fatherhood for himself. He told Kareklas, whose hair is no longer jet black but has a ginger tinge, that without the Prez “deciding to put into practice the decision for Gesy and without the Prez showing the determination he showed, none of the ministers could have achieved it.”

He stopped short of suggesting a DNA test of Gesy to establish beyond any doubt who the real father was, because there was no need. Anyone who looks at Gesy will tell you that it looks just like Nik. It has hair for one thing that Pamborides does not.

 

THE BLOW below the belt that hurt more was Nik’s claim that Pamborides left the government in 2018, after the elections, because his demand to be moved to a new ministry – either commerce and energy or defence – was not satisfied.

“I told him that if you want to continue and stay in the government you have to stay in the post you served with dedication, because I do not experiment by placing a minister in another ministry,” Nik said. He did not agree to stay at health, he added.

Pamborides responded the next day, saying the Nik was lying, although he put it much more elegantly. “I want to hope that his memory has not started deceiving him,” said the presidential candidate hopeful, who was “deeply saddened” about Nik’s comment, “which does not reflect the truth.”

It was Nik that had offered him another ministry, he said, and urged the Prez to ask his two close associates that were present at the meeting. “I hope that when he speaks to them, he will remember himself exactly what was said,” said the wounded Pamborides.

Considering that our Prez never ever lies, it must be his memory playing tricks on him. It is one of the inequities of advancing years that, unlike greying hair, cannot be fixed.

 

ALTHOUGH Pamborides may have won this bout with Nik, it could not have done much good to his drive to secure the backing of Akel for his independent candidacy.

It kind of undermined his claim to the fatherhood of Gesy, which is what he hopes would persuade the comrades to make him their candidate.

What emerged from Nik’s interview was that after his re-election, the Prez had wanted Pamborides to stay on as health minister. He may have offered him another ministry, as Pamborides said in his response, but this was only because he did not want to stay at health.

For someone so devoted to Gesy, why had Pamborides declined the offer to stay on at the health ministry and put Gesy into practice, which until then only existed on paper?

He may have played a big part in the conception of Gesy but he did not hang around for its birth nor did he take any part in bringing it up, which throws into question his fatherhood claim. If anything, he has not been a good father to Gesy.

Υπουργός Εξωτερικών – Συνέδριο Υπ
Mr Nice Guy: Nikos Christodoulides

MANY hacks reported that Nik’s comments in the interview about Averof and Christodoulides hung the latter out to dry, but my worthless view is that the exact opposite happened.

He could not bring himself to say half a negative word about Mr Nice Guy, who for the sake of his personal ambitions was threatening to split Disy, for which Nik repeatedly declared his undying love during the interview.

All he could say was that the party rules and procedures had to be respected. “It is a pity to place above the general good any noble personal ambitions, which are permissible,” he said underlining that it “is of course his right to decide what he considers could serve noble ambitions.”

If it was anyone else threatening to split the party he loves so much, Nik would have made minced meat out of him, but he made an exception for the noble ambitions of Mr Nice Guy. Asked who he would choose between the two, he could not bring himself to utter the name Averof, saying instead, “my party.” Secretly, he is backing the Paphos nobleman as he also belongs to the hair-dye club.

 

MRS NICE Guy, meanwhile, turned against all her colleagues at the foreign ministry, saying they were uncivil towards her since her hubby left his post.

This happened at a meeting of all department heads called by Ioannis Kasoulides soon after taking over as foreign minister in order to get up to speed with ministry business. An aggrieved Mrs Philippa Karsera accused other senior managers of leaking stories about her to the newspapers.

The accused did not stay silent, feeling free to hit back at Mrs Karsera, now that Mr Karseras was not in charge of the ministry, bringing up her bossy behaviour. It was all couched in diplomatic language, her critics fearing that if Mr Nice Guy is elected, they could end up at embassies in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

 

ON A MORE positive note, I am pleased to report that Mrs Karsera has put on her agenda some rehearsals for the role of First Lady.

On March 2, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Limassol, the Association of Friends of the Theotokos Charity will hold a ‘Tea and Tombola (bingo)’ event to raise money. The invitation informed us that ‘The event will be under the auspices of Mrs Philippa Karsera Christodoulidou, wife of the former Foreign Minister.’

Why a charity event would be under the auspices of some public employee I cannot say. I can only guess that one of the funders of Mr Nice Guy’s election campaign donated a sum of money to Theotokos so that Mrs Karsera could have the opportunity of a rehearsal for her future role, but I could be wrong.

 

STAYING on presidential matters, I was very surprised the news media made such a fuss about the resignation of the Under-Secretary to the President Vasilis Palmas, a brazenly rusfetological appointment who was paid a princely salary for keeping a low profile (he was almost invisible) and doing very little.

Phil, advertising its lack of perspective, made Palmas’ departure its front-page lead story under ominous headline, ‘Heavy clouds over the presidential palace.’ This was “a repercussion of the rift between the leadership of Disy and the ex-Foreign Minister Nicos Christodoulides in relation to the presidential election,” reported Christodoulides’ unofficial mouthpiece.

Palmas cited personal reasons for his resignation, but according to Phil’s information it was directly linked to the elections and Palmas’ decision to join Christodoulides’ camp when he announces his candidacy. Why has Palmas left such a lottery ticket job (maximum pay for minimum work), considering Christodoulides insists he has not decided whether he will stand?

ΥΦΥΠΟΥΡΓΟΣ ΠΑΡΑ ΤΩ ΠΡΟΕΔΡΩ ΨΗΦΙΣΜΑ ΔΗΜΟΥ ΜΟΡΦΟΥ
Former undersecretary to the president Vassilis Palmas

WE MAY have surrendered the north of Kyproulla to Turkey, but we are still scoring big victories on the Cyprob at the UN. It may sound like a piss-take, but on Friday the state broadcaster was reporting, in all seriousness, that “Cyprus expressed satisfaction for the inclusion of important points in the resolution for the renewal of the Unficyp mandate for another six months.”

Our permanent representative at the UN, Andreas Hadjichrysanthou “pointed out that in the text, strengthening references were put in that the Cyprus Republic was seeking.” Unfortunately, “the Cypriot side was not fully satisfied, regarding the paragraph about the missing, which could have included more powerful wording.”

With the “strengthening references” Hadjichrysanthou secured the withdrawal of the occupation troops is just a matter of time.

 

WITH SO many strengthening references in the UN resolutions why is the government planning on wasting large amounts of taxpayer money on buying a new anti-aircraft missile system?

According to defence ministry sources, cited by CNA, several systems have been assessed. The purchase would “provide an anti-aircraft screen over the entire island… capable of countering any threat inside Cyprus’ airspace.”

Did we ask for Turkey’s approval, because we do not want a repeat of the Estragosha fiasco when we spent a couple of hundred million pounds, which ended up in Crete because Turkey threatened to take them out.

 

OUR #KyproullaToo movement appears to be fading fast. Greek activist Elias Gkionis eventually sent his file to the Cyprus police, but it mainly consisted of screenshots of posts he and others had made on social media account.

The cops said they would investigate three cases, while the remaining four or five were old cases that had already been dealt with. As for the alleged prostitution ring that was sending women to Dubai via Kyproulla zero evidence was provided.

But the most disheartening news of all was that the Greek police had no testimony implicating Kyproulla in the rape of the 24-year-old in Thessaloniki. All our efforts to involve our country in the rape, in human trafficking and prostitution have been crowned in failure. We will have to live with the disappointment of #KyproullaToo being a flop.

 

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