Tales from the Coffeeshop: Such ingratitude to Diko and the Papadopoulos clan

I COULD not believe the air of superiority and disdain with which Finance Minister Makis Keravnos responded to the suggestion by poor Ethnarch Junior, his party boss, that he resign over his opposition to the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), to which the Prez and the government are supposedly committed.

Junior had quite rightly pointed out if the minister was so strongly opposed to the biggest project undertaken by this government – worth €2 billion – he should leave the government instead of staying on and demonising the project at every opportunity.

Asked on a TV show about this, Keravnos, condescendingly, said that “we must discuss serious issues and not the absurdities of politics,” explaining that “I do not follow or bother with anyone’s comments.” He said, “I have nothing against Mr Papadopoulos,” before accusing him of “being obsessed with certain things”.

He also informed the interviewer that he was a Diko member and wondered whether Junior recognised this, the implication being that as a Diko member he should be considered infallible by his party leader.

THE ARROGANCE of the man is impressive, but what is more mind-blowing is his phenomenal ingratitude to Diko and the Papadopoulos clan, without whom he would have remained the nobody he was until Ethnarch Tassos rescued him from obscurity, by appointing him labour minister in 2003.

For the previous 20 years he was a pen-pusher and file-shuffler nobody had heard of at the semi-governmental, Human Resources Development Authority, eventually, climbing to a position of middle management mediocrity. Tassos made the ungrateful Makis labour minister on the strength of his Diko membership card for a year and then promoted him to finance minister in 2004, when Markos Kyp vacated the post to go to Brussels.

As finance minister he negotiated a settlement with the archbishop – described as extremely favourable – for the tens of millions of pounds of tax dues by the church. Soon after, the church gave him the job of CEO of Hellenic Bank, of which it was the main shareholder, with the approval of the corrupt governor of the Central Bank.

ONLY in Kyproulla could a man, who had never worked in a bank, be placed in charge of the country’s third largest bank. Only a bank controlled by clueless priests would have made such an appointment, putting in charge a man who had only been in a bank as a customer.

He was in the post for which he was totally unsuitable for nine years before being unceremoniously removed in 2014, with a generous pay-off, after the bank had to be bailed out by new investors and the shareholding of the church was drastically diluted.

His unsuccessful tenure at the bank was recognised by the Nik I, who appointed him non-executive director of the Central Bank in 2018, probably on the recommendation of Diko or the archbishop. And in 2023 he became finance minister again, with the approval of Junior.

Keravnos, however, chose to forget his big debt to the Papadopoulos clan, without which he would now be a retired bureaucrat nobody had heard of. But he is so full of himself he was no qualms about publicly mocking the boy of his benefactor and current party leader.

WHEN the appointment of a non-civil servant as director-general of the deputy ministry of culture was announced everyone knew this was a rusfetological choice.

Giorgos Papageorgiou is the other half of the all-powerful Under-Secretary to the President, Irini Piki, who has the job of running the country as the Prez has too many social engagements to have any time left for the boring business of governing. 

His management of the deputy ministry and attempt to concentrate all power in his hands led to a work stoppage by staff a couple of weeks ago. Staff also complained about his “ongoing condescending beaviour” and an “intimidating, offensive and aggressive work environment”.

When the stoppage took place Papageorgiou was nowhere to be found. He was in Italy with one of his minions, touring the country watching operas at the taxpayer’s expense supposedly to choose an opera for the Paphos festival.

This is no job for a ministry bureaucrat, but when your wife is running the country, you can do anything you like, including going on an all-expenses-paid opera tour of Italy, not to mention intimidating and insulting your subordinates.

THE PROBLEM is that Mr and Mrs Piki are close friends of the presidential couple and before his election, Nik II promised to make them both ministers.

When he was elected, he realised that this would not be a very smart move so he gave the super-minister’s job to Piki and left poor old Papageorgiou without a post. Papageorgiou was serving as general manager of the Nicosia municipality company Nicosia for Art, which also manages the municipal theatre.

As head of Nicosia for Art he was in charge of pushing Nicosia’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture in 2030, but failed spectacularly. Nicosia did not even make the second phase of the competition, in contrast to Limassol and Larnaca which did.

His track record in managing the municipal theatre was also rather disappointing, Nicosia councilors openly talking about his lack of organisational skills. But he could still prove capable of choosing a half-decent opera.

WHEN Okypy advertised the post of scientific director the Limassol and Paphos hospital, they could not have expected there would only be one candidate for the job. And not in their worst nightmares would the only candidate be the insufferable, loud-mouthed, bully in charge of the doctors’ union Pasyki.

Dr Sotiris Koumas, head of Pasyki, was the only candidate for the job. This is the guy, who was always on radio shows, engaging in vicious rants against Okypy and its executives, for not knowing how to run hospitals, for cheating and lying to the doctors’ union, for failing to satisfy all his unreasonable demands and for leading the hospitals to ruin.

That a union hack, who has been protecting doctors’ privileges and blocking every attempt of Okypy to rationalise the operation of public hospitals, would have the audacity to apply for the post of scientific director defies belief. Okypy, quite rightly, decided he would not be hired even though he was the only candidate, prompting accusations that Koumas was being penalised for being an Akelite.

What nonsense. How could he be made a ‘scientific director’ of anything when in the last 10 years the only thing he acquired was scientific union militancy?

POOR OLD Marios Hartsiotis, the former justice minister who was given the role of presidential commissioner by the Prez as consolation for his sacking, will now suffer the indignity of losing the two cops that drove him to the presidential palace from Limassol and back every day.

The decision will be taken on Monday, as part of justice minister Costas Fitiris’ drive to end the use of cops by politicians for their security, which is threatened by nobody. Three former House presidents will lose their cops.

Hartsiotis, as presidential commissioner was not entitled to a security detail, but it seems when he left the justice ministry he took the two cops he had with him, in order to give some prestige to a job which had none. This was grossly irregular, which is why the presidential palace claimed this week that the two cops used to restore some of the status Hartsiotis’ lost when he left the ministry, were from the presidential security detail.

This is probably a myth, but the idea that the Prez gave two of his cops to Hartsiotis to stop him sulking about his demotion is quite touching.

CAN WE believe anything the Prez says about the Cyprob? When he went to New York he could not rule out “important developments”. He of course repeated his mantra about the resumption of the talks and then went out of his way to ensure these would never resume.

In his speech to the empty auditorium of the UN General Assembly he commented on President Erdogan’s speech the previous day accusing him of “hypocrisy of the highest form” (he actually said ‘hyprocity’). He was a hyprocrite but publicly insulting the man who holds the key to the resumption of talks, seemed a surefire method to prevent the resumption of talks.

And to ensure the Turkish side would not agree to any important developments, our mission at the UN wrote to all permanent missions asking them not to have meetings or contacts with Turkish Cypriots.

ON THURSDAY the Prez met the UNSG for 10 minutes and in that time presented his 19 new ideas, which were “positively received by Guterres”, according to the information sent by the presidential propagandists from the Big Apple.

Both agreed on the need for a multilateral conference, but understood that this depended primarily on Turkey’s position. This was a blatant lie. Guterres said clearly two weeks ago that there could be no such meeting before the two sides agreed on CBMs and methodology.

Then we had the 2+1 meeting which the Prez claimed he was ready for and prepared to stay on in New York for. Would he have stayed if the meeting was arranged for Wednesday and he would have to miss Thursday’s military parade?

He informed us that the Turkish Cypriot side rejected having the meeting, for which there was no agenda and would have been nothing more than a bit of theatre. But these Turks will not even allow our poor prez to engage in a bit of Cyprob theatre, which he does so well.