Tales from the coffeeshop: Assault dogs let loose as election bickering begins

ALTHOUGH, we are still a month away from the parliamentary elections, wherever you look in Nicosia’s streets there are billboards, with the photoshopped faces of candidates, after our vote.

Most of the candidates seem to be standing for Disy, which must mean the party’s candidates, have a lot more money than those of other parties to spend on campaigning. It may just be there is more competition among the Disy candidates because there would be more seats up for grabs.

Someone standing for Edek in Nicosia, for example, would be wasting his money paying for a billboard because his or her chance of election is zero. The party will be lucky to win a seat for its leader, who is elected automatically once the party reaches the votes threshold.

This is why I have to express my admiration for Marios Hannides, who is standing for Edek and has paid for several billboards around Nicosia. What is incredible is that the guy does not even support the naïve student politics that Edek has embraced since the time of the late Dr Faustus.

Edekites should vote for Marios as a protest vote against their party.

DISY, meanwhile, has decided that it could be leaking too many votes to the self-righteous Odysseas’ party, Alma, and has directed all its fire at the former auditor-general.

On Friday, Disy spokesman Onoufrios Koullas laid into Odysseas for systematically offending the party leader Annita and the rest of the leadership. Koullas, disappointingly, said “we would not follow Mr Michaelides and Akel in populism, toxicity and sensationalism-mongering.”

Michaelides, in contrast, reminded everyone what a truly unpleasant and unlikable man he is with his sanctimonious response. “I congratulate Annita for her choice of party spokesman. He has the suitable CV to worthily express the Disy leadership in the whitewash of the corrupt Anastasiades/Disy administration.”

The odious Ody then explained the moral inadequacy of Koullas, who was unlawfully appointed commissioner of state subsidies (he was a civil servant) and had helped out the Laranca mayor Louroudjiatis, who was subsequently imprisoned for corruption.

“Carry on, on the same downward path, as you were taught by Nicos Anastasiades,” said Ody, forgetting that every investigation of Anastasiades that he carried out (Ryan Air, Saittas, Saudi jets) as auditor-general, was a whitewash.

DEPUTY leader of Disy Efthymios Diplaros also joined the fray but focused on the bigger picture using his intellectual gravitas to answer Ody. This is what he said:

“Let’s see two givens, The first: our country, our Cyprus, is not rotten. The second: yes, there are rotten apples. And I start from this. We say it directly. They (rotten apples) must be identified, isolated, and punished in an exemplary way. Through the correct institutional procedures. This is our fixed policy.

“But this does not mean our country is rotten… insults tens of thousands of public employees that serve conscientiously and honestly, in civil service, education, the police, the army…. Against this climate of levelling off and the accusatory toxic speech, Disy will defend our state as well as the honesty of the big majority of our public employees.”  

Diplaros is evolving into quite a statesman.

INTELLECTUAL gravitas had been introduced to the campaigning by a long-winded article in Politis by two University of Cyprus professors who have joined the Odysseas moral superiority bandwagon, trying to explain rational populism.

I refer to my friend, the former rector and professor of physics, Constantinos Christofides and professor Charidimos Tsoukas, a member of the Cypriot Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, who is also Odysseas’ second in command at Alma.

Their article, which was above my intellectual level, was a response to an article in the same paper, by the director of the House president’s office, Yiannis Aphrodisis, who accused them of “suddenly adopting the most extreme forms of spreading lies and fabricated news, which include, among other things, false accusations of the worst kind.” Aphrodisis did not name the two professors but they were convinced he was referring to them.

I find it quite pathetic that Annita is getting her flunkeys to act as her assault dogs, while she hides in her office, showing a complete lack of desire for the fight. What is even more sickening is that when she speaks publicly she sounds like the spokeswoman of the presidential palace, warning about the destabilisation of the political system.

LAST WEEK our establishment presented the theory that Black Cube, the Israeli company that produced the embarrassing video showing associates of the prez explaining the payment for access methods available to investors, could have been hired by the Russian state.

A skettos-drinking customer had a more plausible theory, which was more in line with the government’s explanation that the video had been commissioned by a private company and the original claim of cyber war may have been wrong.

He speculated that the company that commissioned the video may have belonged to Israeli businessman Simon Aykut, who is serving five years in prison for developing and selling Greek Cypriot property in the north.

Aykut was released, from prison and transferred to Israel where he will complete his sentence, shortly after the story about Black Cube appeared in Politis, which reported that all 30 hours of film footage had been handed over to the government. Aykut has the deep pockets that allowed him to hire the Israeli intelligence agents.

THE TWO-DAY informal EU summit was a 48-hour multiple orgasm experience for our Prez who could not control his ecstatic joy at playing host to all the big-shot EU leaders, having international media covering his every word and posing as the world statesman he craves to be, despite the tiny size of the country.

And in addition to all this, the summit also discussed his pet cause – article 42.7 of the EU treaty – the mutual assistance pact which Preznik has been at pains to revive. The article stipulates that when an EU country is attacked by another state or non-state actor, and triggers the clause, other member states would come to its defence militarily.

The clause has only been triggered once by France in 2015 after the Paris attacks which killed 130 people, but is considered something of a dead letter, which is why the informal summit discussed ways of implementing it.

I suspect the wily Paphite has been pursuing article 42.7 in the hope of activating it next time occupation troops venture into the buffer zone. Would Germany or the Netherlands send troops to maintain the status quo?

STILL GLOWING on Saturday, the Prez said the informal European Council strengthened the country’s international standing and reinforced its role in shaping European policy priorities. The Council’s outcome “contributed to positioning Cyprus as an active participant in addressing regional and European challenges.” What more can anyone say.

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