Tales From the Coffeeshop: Show them all who holds the scissors in this relationship

PREZNIKONE made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, attending the inauguration ceremony for the Paphos campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB Mediterraneo), although the guest of honour was his successor, sporting an open neck shirt.

Although he was sat, next to his protégé during the speeches and invited to participate in the ritual cutting of the ribbon, the scissor was in the hand of Prezniktwo. It was a similar scene to June 2023, when the protégé laid the foundation stone for the campus and the unhappy bunny ex was in the background watching.

After ten years as numero uno, relishing being the centre of attention, it is tough being relegated to another face in the crowd, especially knowing that it was under his self-serving rule that the agreement for the establishment of an AUB campus in Paphos was signed.

And to add insult to injury, in the official press release about the inauguration ceremony, issued by the AUB there was no mention of the fact that the former prez had been one of the guests, as if Nik needed reminding that he is now the forgotten man.

NOT ENTIRELY forgotten. People seem to remember him when some dubious decision of his presidency surfaces in the news. The Vassiliko LNG terminal fiasco, for example, put him back in the news, countless reports appearing about his personal decision, against all advice, to award the project to the Chinese consortium, without competitive tenders.

He has kept silent ever since the contract with the consortium collapsed and it became apparent that his personal decision could cost the taxpayer a couple of hundred million euros. For once the scandal left Nik speechless, unable to find an imaginative explanation to convince us that he was blameless.

To make matters worse, the eagerly awaited publication of his book ‘O Sykophantis,’ in which he plans to respond to all the accusations made against him by Makarios Drousiotis, has suffered a setback, because the man he paid to supervise and edit it, journo Costis Constantinou, has quit.

Nik subsequently approached a respected journo and offered him the job but was turned down. If there is any hack looking for some extra cash, he/she should send an application to Nik. I hear the pay is very attractive.  

THE YOUNGER Nik, meanwhile, must be having a torrid couple of weeks as he has to take a very big decision – whether to give the go-ahead to the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI) project and be lumbered with the responsibility if it suffers the fate of other energy projects.

The council of ministers was supposed to approve the project at its scheduled meeting on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was put off until the afternoon, but no decision was taken. This would have been taken, we were told, at an extraordinary meeting of the cabinet on Thursday, but it was also postponed.

We are now informed that a decision will be taken at a ‘broad’ meeting on Tuesday at which all stakeholders will be present and, hopefully, help Prezniktwo show some untypical decisiveness, one way or the other.

He has been under tremendous pressure from the EU, Greece’s government and Admie, the Greek company that will undertake the project to say ‘yes,’ but there has also been domestic opposition to the project, which claims there were too many unknowns regarding the costs. In the end he may have to flip a coin to make the right decision.

TO RELIEVE himself of all interconnector stress and anxiety, the Prez did what no president had ever done – he went back to school to relive those carefree days, when the only decision he had to make was whether he would eat a tashinopitta or tyropitta at break-time.

Friday was the first day back for secondary schools so the prez visited a technical school in Archangelos, accompanied by the education minister. He was photographed talking to a few kids, probably about the interconnector.

Back in the world of grown-ups, on Friday evening, the US ambassador, Julie Fisher came out fully in support of the interconnector in a speech she made. Hopefully, this meddling by the US, to which the prez invariably listens, would help him make up his mind more than the chat with the kids had.

MASS outrage was the only way the Turks could have greeted the news that Netflix would be showing the series Famagusta, which is set during the Turkish invasion and depicts just a few of the horrible things the Turkish army had done at the time.

The Turks celebrate the anniversary of the invasion with a military parade every year, proud that they had won in 1974. Do they want the world to think that they won the war without killing people (several thousand), causing pain and suffering, bombing towns and villages and forcing people out of their homes?

And it was not only the compulsive moaner Ersin Tatar who was outraged about Netflix showing the series. Turkey’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it was “dark propaganda” and a futile attempt to present the facts differently than they are.” Turkey’s deluded vice president Cevdet Yilmaz also spoke about propaganda and implied the events shown in the series were unreal.

If Turkish soldiers were shown offering flowers to Greek Cypriots during the ’74 invasion and helping old ladies cross the road, the show would have been more realistic for the Turks.

ON TUESDAY, an AKP MP, Huseyin Yayman said that a Netflix, Middle East director would appear before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about the show, when Turkey’s parliament reconvened in October.

Yayman reminded Netflix that Turkey is “such a large market” and expressed the hope that it would take into consideration “the sensitivities of our nation.” Hurting the feelings of Turks, in short, would be bad for business.

It did not take long for Netflix to give in to the thinly veiled threats. On Friday, the head of Turkey’s supreme broadcasting council, announced on ‘X’ that Netflix had agreed to make Famagusta available only in the country it was produced in – Greece – and nowhere else in the world.

The news from Turkey would have shattered the hopes of the Phil writer who wrote that the showing of the series by Netflix “will contribute in an indirect and more contemporary way to the effort for the internationalisation of the Cyprob,” and highlight that it was an “issue of invasion and occupation.”

THE AUDIT office and its spokesman came out with all guns blazing after the cabinet decided to go ahead with plans to ‘modernise’ it. Odysseas, who under normal circumstances would have been ranting and raving about this blatant attempt to curtail his powers, said nothing, appearing to have lost his fearlessness.

He has been on his best behaviour, keeping a very low profile, while waiting for the decision of the supreme constitutional court on his future, which will be announced in ten days, leaving his spokesman Marios Petrides to do all his indignant ranting and raving for him. He has not even tweeted his opinions, preferring to post the official announcements of the audit office, which he writes, on his personal account on ‘X’.

Petrides’ main message was that the government planned to “gag” the auditor-general, as it wanted a five-member audit council, that would include three government appointees, would have to approve his reports.

His reaction may have been a bit rash as justice minister, Marios Hatrsiotis told Phil, that the new regime would be introduced after the retirement of the current auditor-general and attorney-general.

THE REVELATION would have worried Odysseas, considering that he will be at retirement age in nine years. Why is the government bothering with a reform that will be implemented in nine years? Does it know something that we do not?

The reform of the state legal service, which will be carried out in parallel and will end the dual role of the attorney-general as state prosecutor and state legal advisor, is more timely. AG George Savvides, is set to retire in two years, so this is the right time to make the changes.

Now that Odysseas knows that he will not be gagged, what argument will the audit office use to attack the reform plan?

I HEAR from very reliable sources that one of the most zealous cheerleaders of Odysseas, Akel deputy, Irini Charalambidou is planning on standing in the 2028 presidential elections as the anti-corruption candidate.

Of course, a final decision will depend on many factors. But if she finds that she is not electable and Odysseas is no longer auditor-general, she could make way for him. This is just speculation, but it is being discussed as a possible scenario at the presidential palace, which is already working on the prez’s re-election strategy.

ONLY in Kyproulla, would there be complaints threats because pharmacies are staying open longer than the hours stipulated by law.

The pharmacists’ association has threatened to order its members not to open as dispensing chemists at night and on public holidays if the state does not clamp down on pharmacies violating opening hours.

The Soviet market economy must be defended, because wanting to provide a better service to consumers by staying open longer hours is one of the many injustices of capitalism.