THE PREZ, the House Prezita, party leaders and a host of ministers were at Pasydy’s annual congress on Tuesday to pay their respects to our parasitic labour aristocracy and underline their unwavering support for the dictatorship of the privileged proletariat.

New privileges were in the pipeline, said Prezniktwo, who made his name as a member of the aristocracy, to which his other half still belongs, and was rewarded with a state pension when he left the service at the tender age of 45.

The new privileges, which would be approved by the cabinet by the end of this month, include the introduction of work from home, that would ensure the low civil service productivity will become even lower. Employees who do the bare minimum work in the office are certain to lower their productivity when working from home.

As part of the these “flexible forms of employment”, public parasites who are parents of children under the age of 15, will also be entitled to work two hours less each day in order to spend more time with their kids and have a better ‘work-life balance,’ as if finishing work before 3pm every day constitutes a work-life imbalance.

If anything, in the civil service the balance should shift more to work than life.

IT WAS not clear whether the two hours less work each day would mean a 25 per cent cut in wage of the parasite seeking a greater work-life imbalance.

The prez made no mention of the private sector workers who work much harder for longer hours and without iron-clad job security. They cannot have a work-life balance because they have to pay for the parasitic life of privilege of the labour aristocracy. It could be no other way.

It is entirely possible that the prez came up with these measures on the advice of his better half, who, as a first lady, cannot spend all day working at the foreign ministry. She has a daughter under 15 which qualifies her for the two-hour daily discount and nobody would check on her if she decides to work from the presidential palace every day.

THOSE other members of the labour aristocracy, public school teachers, have decided to veto the education ministry’s proposed evaluation system! In Kyproulla’s dictatorship of the privileged proletariat, the employees decide how they should be evaluated for their work, and the employer is obliged to obey.

The secondary teachers’ union Oelmek will have a referendum about the evaluation system, although union bosses have decided to reject the new system. Their main objection relates to the head teacher participating in the evaluation of his or her teachers. They consider it wrong that the head of the school should evaluate staff.

Who should evaluate them? The union boss, a teacher’s spouse/parent or perhaps the kids? On a positive note, Education Minister Athena Michaelidou, despite having been a member of the labour aristocracy herself, is refusing to put up with this union nonsense.

She told Antenna TV, “we are carrying out reform, we are not going to satisfy union demands or commit the mistakes of the past.” She defiantly added: “We have not accepted proposals that demolish the philosophy of this reform.”

We have at least one minister with balls.

MEANWHILE the members of the labour aristocracy at the University of Cyprus, have conducted two studies about the economic and social effects and footprint of the university. The studies were aimed at justifying the UCy’s big cost to the taxpayer, perhaps because there have been murmurings about the very big funds it absorbs.

“For every million euro that is invested at UCy the economic output of the country is increased by €7.06m, the GDP is strengthened by €3.42m the employment of about 80 people is supported,” said the president of governing council, Tasos Anastasiou, in presenting the findings of the studies.

Were these studies undertaken to back the very big wages plus benefits enjoyed by the UCy academics, who are among the best paid in the EU? Is there really nothing more worthwhile for the brains of the university to carry out studies on than the justification of their wages?

YOU HAD to laugh listening to Rik radio advertising a political discussion that would focus on the “latest developments of the Cyprus problem.” These ‘developments’ are as much part of the Cyprob discourse as Turkish intransigence. If five per cent of these ‘developments’ were actual developments, the Cyprob would have been solved 30 years ago.

The Prez also spoke about developments. While he was fully aware of the difficult situation, he said, “we are intensifying our efforts even more, and I hope in the next days we will have some developments that will help in this course, not just with regard to confidence-building measures but, much more so, in relation to the resumption of talks within the agreed framework.”

Talk of developments was not fantasy. As he explained, “we have the key, we have the strategy, we have the way to create the situation that would lead us to conditions for a resumption of talks.” Why is he not using them? Is he waiting for the developments to take place first?

AT MONDAY’S meeting, Ersin Tatar rejected three proposals made by our Prez, which I suppose was a development. Speaking after the meeting our Prez could not hide his disappointment, answering a question by a Turkish Cypriot journalist.

“The meeting did not produce the result I was waiting for. The yavas-yavas (slowly-slowly) approach in the Cyprus problem does not work.” I thought our side was fully in favour of the yavas-yavas approach, given our dogmatic opposition to suffocating timeframes.

The good news is that the UNSG has re-appointed Maria Angela Holguin as his personal envoy, which is a development.

JUST AFTER Easter, the Prez attended a round-table discussion with millennials. Nothing wrong with this, except that the discussion was arranged by IMH, a conference organiser, in which Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou is a major partner, and it was sponsored by six or seven businesses.

Considering the cost of setting up such a discussion is minimal – I doubt the millennials were paid to take part – IMH must have made a very healthy profit from the sponsorship money, which was paid only because the Prez would be the star of the event.

The Prez probably did not realise it, having never worked in the private sector, but he was being monetised, used by a private business to generate income for itself, from sponsorship.

IF ANYONE wanted additional proof that we are living in a dictatorship of the privileged proletariat, they should look no further than the awards introduced by Disy’s women’s wing Godisy last year. This year’s awards given to women will be announced in the next few days.

Godisy has established the ‘Zeta Emilianidou Awards’ named after the career civil servant who ended her career as a labour minister, who always took the side of the unions. Emilianidou, who died while serving as minister in 2022, was a very well-respected civil servant, renowned for her work ethic, abilities and honesty.

These are qualities you would expect from anyone who reaches the top of the civil service. I fail to see the logic of naming any award after her, as she was just another technocrat, who never did anything pioneering, never took a risk, made no big sacrifice for society, and spent her career in the secure and undemanding world of the civil service. What was the special example she set, apart from being good at her job, that merited giving her name to an award for women?

I suppose a society ruled by a proletarian aristocracy will have civil servants as its role models.