WHO would have thought that the Prez of our tiny Republic would be driven around in an armoured limousine that cost a whopping €595,000?  

This is a big step-up from the current presidential limo he is using, which cost less than half this amount when his mentor Nik I bought it in 2019. It is a BMW 760Li, which was a real bargain at €258,000 plus VAT. Prices may have gone up in the last seven years, but not by more than 100 per cent.  

This must be a significant upgrade on the existing limo, although the letter sent to the legislature and made public on Saturday did not specify what make the new presidential limo would be, nor did it go into any detail about its features that cost so much. Maybe there is a lot of gold in the interior, and the seats are made of Gucci leather.

All that was said in the letter was that “the technical specifications for the vehicle include requirements of a confidential nature relating to safety features, such as the armour requirements that must not be revealed.”

We do not want all the terrorists and rebels roaming Kyproulla knowing what type of rocket would be required to destroy the limo’s armour.

ON THE PLUS side, having our Prez being chauffeured around in a 600k limo is certain to upgrade both the standing of the Republic and the world status of our head of state, at a time when the Turks are doing everything in their power to downgrade us and upgrade the pseudo-state.

I bet Tufan Erhurman is not being driven around in a €600,000 limo, so how can he even entertain the idea of political equality and equal sovereignty? Of course, he can always claim that flash, expensive limos are very ‘Third World dictators’. The late president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe had a fleet of Mercedes-Benz S600 because that gave him and his impoverished country status.

The existing presidential car

We should not be too critical of our president’s extravagance with the taxpayer’s money, because the US president’s Cadillac Limo, described as an “impenetrable fortress” is estimated to cost about $1.5 million, almost three times as much as our limo.

But he is the Prez of the superpower and our Nik is just the prez of a midget country, with a smaller population than a borough of New York city, but with serious delusions of grandeur.

HAS AVEROF lost his marbles? I can’t think of another explanation for his coming out in support of the Prez, in the event “of a strategic settlement plan for the Cyprob”.

Speaking on Omega TV, Averof asked that if we have a settlement plan before us, “would Disy insist on its (presidential) candidacies or support the person who is putting into practice the reason we exist as a party?” The reason for Disy’s existence is apparently the settlement of the Cyprob, in which the current Prez is not remotely interested and Averof knows this.

Essentially, he was having a dig at Disy chief Annita who, a couple of hours earlier on Sigma TV, said that there is no way Disy would back a Christodoulides candidacy, as it was an opposition party and would contest the 2028 election with its own candidate. 

She was responding to Nik I’s suggestion a week earlier that Disy backs his protégé in the presidential elections. Poor old Nik II needs to be given another term to enjoy his 600k euro limo and not because, as Averof would have us believe, for securing a strategic settlement plan. That is never going to happen under Nik II.

MEANWHILE, Disy veteran Harris Georgiades was spotted at a Nicosia kleftiko joint in a perfectly pressed pair of slacks and shirt sitting on his own waiting for his dinner companion.

It turned out to be Disy deputy, Giorgos Pamborides, who has made no secret of his desire to contest the Disy candidacy for the presidential elections. Has Harris, who is much better networked at the party, decided to help Pamborides win support?

Entirely possible. What was strange was that the two men chose a kleftiko joint for their meeting, despite the fact that Pamborides is at the capital’s most fashionable eatery – Beba – almost every night. Was this perhaps his idea of being seen by the kleftiko-eating Disy plebs, who will also vote for the presidential candidate?

Beba may attract a better class of diner, but it’s the masses that win elections.

STAYING on social matters, cinemagoers were surprised to see the first lady Philippa Karsera Christodoulides (a.k.a. PKC) on Wednesday evening at the Constantia open air cinema in Nicosia. The surprise was that these regular cinema-goers had never before seen PKC at the cinema.

There was a reason for her attending this particular show, titled Bernadette. It was about a much more famous wife of a president – Bernadette Chirac, played by the divine Catherine Deneuve – following her life during Jacque Chirac’s presidency, so PKC must have felt there was a thing or two she could learn from her presidential sister.

WHILE the wife was at the movies, the Prez was at the launch of a book written by Phil hacks Michalis Ignatiou and Costas Venizelos, titled Enochos (Guilty) No surprises for guessing who the ‘guilty’ one was, none other than the US Secretary of State during the invasion Henry Kissinger.

This is not the first book the pair have written about Kissinger. They declared him guilty in the first book they had written about him, so what was the point of doing it again? Have they not got tired of telling us what a bad guy Kissinger was?

It would have been much more interesting if Ignatiou finally wrote that book he had promised to write in 2004, in which he would name all the traitors who took money from the Yanks to support the Annan plan. Now that would be a much more interesting book than making the revelation – for the millionth time – that Kissinger was pro-Turkish.

Education Minister Athena Michaelidou is proving to be a tough cookie

NEXT YEAR the criminally insane appointment system at public schools, based on the infamous waiting list, is supposed to come to an end, after an absurd 10-year transition period designed to get a maximum number of bad teachers into public schools, but the teaching unions want to keep it in place.

It goes without saying that the teaching unions have the support of parties led by Akel’s commies who want the worst, laziest, disinterested graduates to have the opportunity to be put in a classroom and give kids a lousy lesson and lower education standards in public schools.

The only person standing against this insanity is Education Minister Athina Michaelidou, who is a real tough cookie whom the teaching unions cannot bully. On Wednesday at the House education committee she asked the obvious question the cowardly politicians never dared ask in the 40 years of indiscriminate hiring of graduates and declaring them teachers.

“In what country can you be appointed just by submitting your degree?” she asked. Not only were we appointing graduates without an interview just because they submitted their degree and were prepared to wait 20-30 years to be appointed, but once they entered the classroom their teaching was never assessed because the unions did not allow this.

IN SHORT, thousands of graduates were put in public school classrooms over the decades, without any teacher training, without being interviewed by anyone and without ever being assessed. Some may have been the crappiest teachers in the world, but they could carry on working because their work was never assessed!

Could this be an explanation for the steadily declining educational standards at public schools? Of course it is, and it is no coincidence that no politician has dared to back Michaelidou, the only member of the Christdoulides cabinet with balls. The Prez will certainly not back her because he is in an election campaign, despite not yet deciding if he will seek re-election.

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