IN THE END Prez Niccolo’s Machiavellian scheming aimed at making his errand boy the heir to his throne, that our establishment wrote about weeks ago, did not go to plan. His chosen heir could still be crowned Nikos the Second tonight, but the exposure of the two-faced Niccolo’s dastardly plotting against Averof may have given Mavroyiannis a chance by triggering the wrath of Disy voters.
Such was Prez Niccolo’s eagerness to wrap up his heir’s election, he called the Disy leadership to the palace on Sunday night before the counting of the votes had even been completed to tell them that the party should vote for Christodoulides. And to add insult to injury, he said he had spoken to his errand boy who would give the party a couple of ministries.
The back-stabbed Averof told him it was for the party to decide who it would vote for and walked out, and so did most of his ministers who were there, unable to stomach their boss’ audacity. The prez did not give up his lobbying for Christodoulides, calling another meeting the next morning, but again failing to impose his diktats; a couple of ministers did not even show up.
He eventually sensed Disy voters were enraged with his duplicity and backed down. Not only did he countersign Averof’s proposal to the political bureau for a conscience vote, he decided at the last minute not to go to the Disy meeting for fear of being jeered. It would have been no more than his Machiavellian scheming deserved.
EVERYONE has their theory about why Prez Niccolo was so keen on making phoney like Christodoulides his heir. It may be because Moscow, to which he is beholden, approves of him. It could be because he will continue Nik’s partition efforts or because he would be easy to control. It could be a combination of all the above, but it is certainly not because he thinks he would be a good president.
Kate Clerides’ explanation, posted on social media, could be the most plausible. She wrote with a viciousness I never thought she had in her:
“The biggest disappointment of my life is Nicos Anastasiades. He blackened Disy with the corruption of his administration and is now trying to split Disy. He bred Nicos Christodoulides, with the aim of making him president, in order to cover his backside and prevent the exposure of his personal involvement in the corruption…. My warm request, as daughter of Glafcos Clerides, to all loyal Disy voters is not to vote for Christodoulides, the Trojan Horse of Nicos Anastasiades, Papadopoulos, Sizopoulos, Garoyian and Theocharous. Vote for Andreas Mavroyiannis….”
DESPITE the backlash of Disy’s supporters who overwhelmingly voted not to back either candidate, Prez Niccolo got his henchmen to voice their support for Christodoulides – former justice minister, Ionas Nicolaou, interior minister Nicos Nouris, labour minister Kyriakos Koushos all came out in support of Nikos II. Education Prodromos Prodromou did this on Sunday night.
The first two have set their sights on the Disy leadership and could be challenging Averof in next month’s election congress, with Niccolo said to favour his loyal poodle Ionas. Prodromou hates Mavroyiannis, but this was not his only motivation. Christodoulides has reportedly promised to make him our ambassador in Greece.
He also promised the post to Diko deputy Pavlos Mylonas, so we should not rule out the possibility of opening a second embassy in Greece.
TWO MEN that have been living off the taxpayer for their entire careers will fight for the right to carry on doing so, at the top income scale with maximum benefits for another five years. Today, Kyproulla will have its first ever Pasydy president. Should we laugh or cry at the prospect of being led by a man who has never done a real job in his life?
Christodoulides owes everything to the taxpayer, as his wife is on the payroll of the state, which has also picked up the bill for the education of their four daughters in Kyproulla’s most expensive private school. Now, the voters could also provide him the luxury of taking his family on holiday on the state’s private jet.
Mavroyiannis, with more than 30 years of service, has also done pretty well out of the taxpayer, but he never claimed what he was not entitled to like his rival public parasite, whose epic leeching was not always within the bounds of the law.
Christodoulides has collected thousands of euros in allowances he was not legally entitled to, as a foreign ministry official, and refused to return the money when asked to do so on the grounds he needed it. As president he will be able to turn on the allowance taps as he chooses.
FOR MOST of the candidates this was an extremely long campaign, but for none of them has it been as long as for Christodoulides who started it some nine years ago when Prez Nik took him to the presidential palace to place him in charge of his diplomatic office.
Interestingly, he was one of the two promising young men at the presidential palace, the other being the finance minister Constantinos Petrides, who was the Under-secretary to the president. While Petrides was formulating policy, submitting proposals to the president, coming up with ideas and clashing with civil servants, Christodoulides was single-mindedly working on how to become president.
As government spokesman, he cultivated relations with journalists, giving them exclusive info and pandering to their inflated sense of self-importance. They paid him back with flattering reports and lavish praise. He would call TV stations to send crews to cover his public appearances. He never spoke against anyone, giving the job of attacking parties that were criticising the government to his deputy.
In Nik’s second term, he demanded the foreign ministry and got it, while Petrides went to finance at which he lay the foundations for a sound economy, with sustained growth and ensured Kyproulla’s steady upgrading by ratings agencies. He was also a regular target of opposition parties and unions for policies that were not always popular, but he got things done.
CONTRAST this with Christodoulides’ time at the foreign ministry, at which he did very little apart from feed his favourite hacks with info about his great achievements at the EU, which amounted to nothing, and his triumphs over the Turks.
Back home he was announcing meaningless initiatives on gender diplomacy (for which he hired an expert, who is currently working on his campaign team, and would help him win the female vote), economic diplomacy, culture diplomacy and culinary diplomacy.
As foreign minister, he was also playing host to mukhtars, community leaders and interest groups with whom he lunched at the ministry and made them feel important. There is no free lunch as they say.
He even took money from the enlightenment campaign, supposedly for some marathon initiative by the ministry. Some of these funds were used to boost the traffic to his personal social media accounts.
In the 10 years Petrides and Christodoulides worked for the government, the one who offered nothing to the public, and used his post exclusively in the pursuit of his personal interest, could be the next president. And if he is elected, from Monday morning he will start working on his re-election, as this is the only thing he really knows how to do.
STAGGERED by the scale of the support given to Christodoulides by Phil. In the last week all its columnists lambasted Disy for failing to back his candidacy and Averof for being a sore loser and for backing Mavroyiannis. Never before had the paper shown such concern about the unity of Disy, although it regularly attacked Averof.
While several of the paper’s hacks have been promoting Christodoulides as the political Messiah, since he was foreign minister, I would have thought they would have avoided writing like members of his campaign team. It could be because the candidate has paid the paper huge amounts of money for advertising. In the last couple of weeks, every story you clicked on the website would bring up a picture or video of the man. All media look after their best advertisers.
We will find out how much he paid Phil when he finally submits his campaign expenditure to the auditor-general.
I LOVE the announcements by nobodies in support of one or the other candidate. We have the hunters, the Eoka fighters, the coup resistance fighters, the people of culture, the dog lovers etc. But we never had the family of a dead archbishop supporting a candidate. Last week Christodoulides issued an announcement, saying it was “a great honour the members of the family of the late Archbishop Chrysostomos, Demetris Demetriou, Antonis Demetriou and Maroulla Charilaou aligned themselves with the collective effort of thousands of fellow citizens for the effective tackling of the challenges…..”
THE COMRADES of Akel, meanwhile, have gone into hiding, so as not to jeopardise Mavroyiannis’ election prospects. Having a candidate with a chance of winning they seem to have decided that the best way to help him is for comrades to stay out of sight and say as little as possible during the campaign, for fear of putting off voters. It is a smart move especially now that there is a real possibility that pissed off Disy voters will back their man. The party does not want to say anything that might give them second thoughts.
In the end the election will be decided by how many of the pissed off from Disy will want to punish the scheming Prez Niccolo and his protégé by voting for Mavroyiannis or by abstaining?
I advised readers who not to vote for last week and he ended up taking the biggest share of the vote. Being superstitious, I will avoid doing the same today, for fear it will have the same result. Nobody takes my advice seriously anyway.
