THE PEOPLE-PLEASER Prez has lost his touch. He appears to be pissing off rather than pleasing most people while the media have also turned on him.

Before the public uproar about the part he supposedly played in the demise of the Odysseas-general had died down, he suffered the embarrassment of having the list of three judges he nominated for a place on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rejected by the committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

The rejection, which was greeted as an international embarrassment inflicted on poor old Kyproulla by the choices made by the prez, was made by the relevant committee because one of his nominees did not satisfy the requirements for “appointment to high judicial office”. Such a rejection, according to our learned friends, is not unheard of and Kyproulla is not the only country to have suffered it.

This may have been forgotten in a few days, but a report in Alithia on Saturday stoked the fire. The paper reported that the judge, Marika Papathoma Kalligerou, who did not meet the requirements because of her allegedly poor command of the English language, had been the lawyer of the prez before she became a judge, when he was a lowly civil servant looking to make his way in the world.

JUDGE Kalligerou, reported Alithia, filed a recourse on behalf of our prez in 2004 challenging the promotion of four of his foreign ministry colleagues ahead of him, arguing that he should have been promoted. The application was rejected by the court.

She had also represented him when he sued the University of Cyprus for cancelling his appointment as lecturer because he had close ties with the president of the special committee that recommended his hiring. The application was rejected in 2012, but it appears the friendship between lawyer and client survived.

Lawyer Kalligerou became a judge at the administrative court during the enlightened rule of Preznikone and was subsequently promoted to the supreme court, without her former client putting in a good word for her with his then boss. Christodoulides just included her among the nominees for the ECtHR post because she was a friend and since becoming prez he has looked after all his friends.

How was he supposed to know that her English was not up to scratch, and she would be turned down because of that? Conspiracy theorists are informed that Kalligerou was one of the members of the supreme constitutional abattoir that slaughtered the sacred cow.

ON THE SAME day the rejection was announced, the government suffered an even bigger embarrassment when a convicted murderer, who had been granted leave to attend a family banquet in his village in Paphos, escaped and went on the run.

The murderer, Doros Theophanous, a.k.a. Komotis (hairdresser) sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his pregnant partner and her three-year-old daughter in 2011, managed to flee from the family house unnoticed by the four prison wardens and three members of the police rapid reaction unit (Mmad) who had accompanied him.

What I could not understand is why a murderer, convicted for such a heinous crime, would be allowed to leave prison and visit his family. Was it because he was a Paphite or had he by any chance given a haircut to the Prez, before his incarceration?

Anyway, at the time of writing this he was still on the run, further boosting the embarrassment for the police command, the justice minister and the government, which you would not trust to organise an orgy in a brothel.

GOOD to see that the trilateral jamborees that our Prez inaugurated when he was foreign minister are not completely dead. The one with Egypt and Greece was resurrected on the sidelines of UN General Assembly in New York.

Foreign minister Constantinos Kombos met with his counterparts Giorgos Gerapetritis and Badr Abdelatty on Tuesday and they “reviewed the trilateral cooperation in several fields such as energy, security and issues of the diaspora”, a brief announcement said.

How could it have been any longer, considering that all the cooperation in the field of energy with Egypt that was trumpeted, whenever there was a trilateral meeting amounted to a big zero. And it will amount to an even bigger zero now that Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah el-Sisi has kissed and made up with Turkey’s president.

Kombos and Abdelatty also met on their own to “discuss bilateral cooperation and ways of deepening strategic ties”. Energy has been left by the wayside as our cooperation moves to a higher level.

KOMBOS is beginning to show symptoms of the delusions of grandeur that our prez was suffering from when he was foreign minister. He has started to talk like him. While in New York Kombos said a “a series of high level contacts are continuing and they are based on three basic parameters.”

The most interesting is the third parameter which involves “the expansion of our diplomatic footprint, which is expanded through contacts with countries with which contact is not frequent and with the effort for them to be always focused on the creation of common features that would create a mutually beneficial situation.” 

GESY launched a new campaign on Thursday, appealing to people’s subconscious with repetition and clever images to use the health system sparingly, so as not to delay care for people in urgent need of it. “Put yourself in his position, don’t take his position,” is the slogan of the campaign.

The announcement came at a lavish news conference, with barista coffees on demand and a lavish spread of gourmet stuffed croissants, warm pastries, individual fruit salads and creamy sweets topped with clusters of nutty brownies. Mouthwatering indeed.

A sparse press release, with little to no substantive information, was handed out in formal navy blue Gesy folders with a pen attached sporting the Gesy logo – which I assume one should use responsibly so as not to deprive the ink from someone who may have something important to write.

Of the about 30 attendees, including the panel of speakers, there were five or six hacks and the rest were well-groomed officials, men in dark suits and women in formal, streamlined, sparkling attire. I guess that, once the hacks departed, the smartly dressed dignitaries stayed on to ensure the buffet, paid for by our monthly Gesy contributions, did not go to waste.

IF YOU have no life, no friends and no interests you could head to Akrotiri at 11am today for a fun demonstration against the British bases organised by the Pancyprian Peace Council, a relic of the Soviet era, used by the Kremlin for its anti-West propaganda. The Pancyprian Peace Council, which wants to stop Israel’s war in Gaza had no such urge about Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Gripped by Cold War nostalgia, Akel has called on its sheep to attend the demo organised by its fellow travellers. The commies fear that “the concentration of American and British troops on the British base of Akrotiri multiply the dangers for the security of Cyprus and our people.”

Akel’s sheep do not even get Sunday off. Last Sunday the flock was at the presidential palace protesting about Odysseas and today it will be in Akrotiri. But they have been promised next Sunday off.

NOW THAT Dromolaxia and Meneou have been merged into one municipality, municipal councilors are in a quandary about the name it should be given. One proposal was to get academics at the University of Cyprus to carry out historical and geographical research of the area and propose a name.

It was defeated and the council decided instead to ask the residents of the municipality to come up with suggestions for a name. I am not a resident of either, but I have a couple of suggestions for a new name. One is Dromoneou but my favourite – which I think could be a winner – is Menelax, because it sounds so European; alternatively, to keep its Greek identity we could call it Menelaxia.

OUR ESTABLISHMENT has decided to write the history of the tashinopitta, but has been unable to find any information about it. On Google you can find recipes for it but nothing about its origins. Is it a Cypriot food, like halloumi, as the Turkish Cypriots also make it? Is it Arabic, as it contains tahini, or is it Armenian (my father used to buy delicious ones made by an Armenian policeman’s wife)? I would be greatly obliged for any information as it would give me a starting point for my research.