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NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL A MINISTER
Cyprus Mail, Cyprus
Aug. 14, 2006
THE ONE MAN who stands head and shoulders above all the
recently-appointed ministers, despite being short and shunning high
heeled shoes, is the former mayor of Lefkara and EDEK vice-president
Sophocles Sophocleous, who was given the Justice and Public Order
Ministry portfolio.
In just a couple of months, Soph has become a household name thanks to
his insatiable appetite for publicity. You rarely turn the radio on,
during the morning, current affair zone shows, without hearing him
expressing an opinion about some news topic.
His five-minute monologues, which feature many fancy words and
important-sounding phrases, are delivered with such self-belief and
pomposity you would never have thought his previous job was as modest
village mukhtar. But now he has arrived on the bigger stage, enjoying
the exposure that his truly, dazzling political oratory deserves.
In this respect, he is another upholder of that fine EDEK tradition,
started by the party's founder and former leader, Dr Faustus Lyssarides
and kept alive by the latter's successor Yiannakis Omirou - using the
maximum amount of words to convey a minimum amount of thought. Being
a true socialist windbag, Soph will almost certainly succeed Omirou
when he steps down as leader in 2026.
Soph is from the same village as Dr Faustus which would support the
theory that his gift for rhetorical wizardry is not in his genes.
There must be something in the water of Lefkara, because, by the law
of probability, it is impossible for such a relatively small village
to produce two world class, natural-born, socialist, windbags within
40 years of each other.
PUBLICITY-MAD Soph has inaugurated a new way of doing things at the
ministry that ensures maximum media coverage for him. He has been
inviting journalists to sit in on meetings with different groups,
because he is a great believer in transparency, which leads to greater
personal publicity.
Ten days ago he invited hacks to attend his meeting with a delegation
of cabaret owners, who wanted to discuss the problems faced by the
pimping sector. What minister with any sense would have ever invited
a bunch of lowlifes who live off prostitution to his office?
Even if he felt obliged to see them, surely he should have kept the
meeting a carefully-guarded secret. But not Soph - he invited hacks
to the meeting so they could tell the world that our Minister of
Justice and Public Order is so open-minded he would even grant an
audience to owners of vice dens.
It gets better. The street-wise minister told the sleaze-merchants that
he knew what went on in cabarets and had given the cops instructions
to clamp down on the sexual exploitation of women. And if police
found that a cabaret was pushing women into prostitution it would be
closed down, "through the strict enforcement of the law", relating
to inadequate fire safety measures and lack of licences.
But if the cabarets did not engage in prostitution, the minister
would not insist on the strict enforcement of the law. It's a weird
kind of message he's sending out. If this ingenious plan works, next
month he should invite the Pancyprian Association of Drug Dealers to
his office and tell them that if they stopped selling drugs the cops
would not give them speeding tickets or arrest them for possession
of guns. And if the dealers behave, the cops could waive the strict
enforcement of the law for the odd murder or bomb attack as well.
BUT WHY had the cabaret owners asked for a meeting with the Justice
Minister? Apparently, there was too much competition from freelance
hookers and cabaret earnings were falling so they wanted the state
to help the freelancers find alternative employment.
As the lawyer representing the cabaret owners said, his clients
were concerned because the government was pushing foreign students
(Chinese in their majority) and asylum seekers into prostitution by
denying them work permits. It would not even allow them to work in
restaurants washing plates, said the lawyer, thus making prostitution
the only way for them to earn a living.
Yes, it's official - cabaret owners not only have a social conscience
but high morals as well. Unfortunately Soph, could do nothing as
work permits came under the authority of the interior ministry and
he could not help the cabaret owners' noble campaign to save asylum
seekers and students from the indignity of prostitution, even though
it pays much better than washing plates.
SUPER-SMART Soph Soph appears not to have understood what the meeting
was about. The cabaret owners were openly demanding help from the state
to reduce competition and protect their revenue from prostitution and
Soph was telling them that he would close them down if they continued
the sexual exploitation of women.
As he said: "I know what goes on in cabarets. I am not an Amerikanaki
(a naive American)."
THE EDUCATION Ministry has at long last issued an official statement
confirming that it would not give the remainder of the money owed to
director Panicos Chrysanthou for the completion of his film Akamas,
because he was in breach of his contract. According to the statement,
Chrysanthou had included a scene in the film that the ministry's Film
Advisory Council, a body safeguarding artistic freedom, had asked
him to leave out.
Chrysanthou, I am informed, is now trying to raise the cash (about
30,000 euros), needed for making copies of the film, from private
individuals, so that he can show it at the Venice Film Festival.
Incidentally, the ministry's announcement did not mention the fact
that the Advisory Council had written to Chrysanthou, instructing
him to withdraw Akamas from the Festival.
The decision not to give any more money for the film was taken by
education minister Pefkios Georgiades.
People who know him found it hard to believe that he could have taken
such a hard-line on the film as he is quite an arty and open-minded
chap that, normally, would not dream of behaving in such an illiberal
fashion.
A ministerial committee consisting of the Finance, Interior and
Education ministers had seen the film. Michalis Sarris and Andreas
Christou found nothing wrong with it and neither did Pefkios, in
private at least. However, Pefkios decided to raise the issue of the
contract and insist on the contentious scene being cut, because he
was afraid Akamas would provoke an outcry by nationalists, something
that was certain to have angered his friend the Ethnarch.
And rather than face the Ethnarch's righteous wrath he chose the
lesser of two evils - to be seen as a Stalinist bully who supports
censorship and clamps down on artistic freedom.
EARLIER this week, our establishment was contacted by a member of
the Cyprus State Orchestra who informed us that last week's item,
saying that the orchestra's director Spyros Pisinos did not want to
use the refurbished and revamped Nicosia Municipal Theatre because
of the poor acoustics was not correct.
While it was true that Pisinos had decided to use the Strovolos
Municipal Theatre instead, it was not because of the bad acoustics.
It was because the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOK) had priority
on booking dates for using the Nicosia theatre and the Orchestra had
to take the days left. The highly-strung Pisinos could never accept
playing second violin to THOK, as he is an orchestra conductor.
This does not mean that the acoustics of the revamped theatre are
satisfactory, especially for piano recitals and string quartets. When
the theatre was being refurbished, a well-connected music enthusiast
had arranged for a foreign expert on acoustics to visit Cyprus and
offer advice on what should be done.
A meeting was arranged with Mayor Zampelas, but it was cancelled at
the last minute, after the project's architect raised a fuss, because
she knew more about theatre acoustics than a man who had worked for
some of the best-known concert halls in the world.
THE CAMPAIGN for the election of a new Archbishop moved to war-ravaged
Lebanon this week as some of the candidates for the throne decided
to become international relief agencies. Paphos Bishop Chrysostomos
was taken to the Lebanon by a French military helicopter and took
with him 60,000 bucks which he distributed to representatives of
the different faiths (Latins, Orthodox, Shi'ite, Sunni). He had four
meetings in three hours and then boarded the chopper and returned to
the plantation.
Moneybags Kykkos Bishop Nikiforos, the front-runner of the
campaign after spending millions of the Kykkos monastery moullah on
purchasing support, did not go to the Lebanon himself, but he sent
his representative, Archimandrite Isaias Kykkotis, who also arrived
on Wednesday. He went to take delivery of the 100 tons of food,
medicine and water - collected by the Department for the Provision
of Humanitarian Help of Kykkos monastery and the Armenian Church -
that arrived on a Greek ship the following day.
There had been some squabbling over the sending of help to the
Lebanon. Chrysostomos said he had initially proposed that the Holy
Synod sent humanitarian but his fellow bishops decided that this
should be done at a later stage. Could their reticence have anything
to do with the fact that as head of the Synod Chrysostomos would have
taken most of the credit for this electoral Christian charity? He
was left with no choice but to undertake a personal initiative. It
had nothing to do with the elections, he assured us.
Meanwhile the fabulously wealthy Nikiforos Monastery had a special
department for offering international aid, which had been in operation
for 10 years. According to Kykkotis, Chrysostomos was informed, from
the first day of the war that the department was at the disposal of
the Synod if the bishops wanted to send aid.
Chrysostomos, who chairs the Synod, never got back to him, presumably
not wanting rival candidate, Nikiforos to take the credit for leading
the relief effort. So we had the ludicrous situation of two separate
Church relief missions to the Lebanon in two days.
IS DIKO seriously considering backing walrus lookalike, Ouranios
Ioannides as its candidate for Nicosia mayor? Is the party so short of
adequate members that it has to resort to backing a horribly mediocre,
over-the-hill, superannuated, political opportunist who has served
as a DISY deputy and Clerides minister?
This refusal of our politicians to retire is really irritating.
Ouranios had his stint as a deputy and several years as a monumentally
ineffective education minister. Despite earning a good living -
and now a generous pension - from the taxpayer for all those years,
he also stood in last May's parliamentary elections as DISY candidate.
He failed to get elected, so now he has gone to DIKO in the hope that
it would back him as a mayoral candidate for Nicosia. And the idiots
at DIKO are trying to persuade their alliance partners to accept
this political drifter, who could not organise an orgy in a brothel,
as a credible candidate. Why? It must be because of his good looks.
A WORD of sympathy for former Minister of Agriculture Timis Efthymiou
who spoke of his deep hurt, in an interview with Simerini, after
he was unceremoniously dumped by the Ethnarch in the last cabinet
reshuffle. Timis, spoke with the bitterness of a spurned lover,
about his treatment by Tassos, whom he accused of "ingratitude and
arrogance".
But if anyone is ungrateful it is Timis. He came from nowhere and
served as a minister for three years after fooling the Ethnarch about
the number of votes his joke of a party - Movement of Free Citizens -
would bring him. But after May's parliamentary elections, when the
Free Citizens failed to win a seat, the Ethnarch realised that he
had no need for Timis and sent him home.
Timis must be a complete Amerikanaki, if he thought Tassos would
sacrifice a ministry on someone who commanded an electoral strength
of one per cent because he was generously handing out state subsidies
to Paphos farmers.
THE PLANTATION'S airports were put on high alert after the news about
the possible terrorist plot against planes leaving Heathrow. However
one customer who flew out of Laranca yesterday morning informed us
that there was a little confusion among cops and ground staff over
what should be done about lab-tops.
On arriving at the gate for boarding, the man was told by a young,
zealous cop with a shaved head, in charge of the baggage scanner,
that he could not take the laptop onto the plane and had to give to
the ground staff.
This was strange, because the passenger had been told at the
checking-in desk that he could take the laptop with him. Others,
who had arrived earlier were queuing up to hand in their laptops to
a diminutive Cyprus Airways ground stewardess.
At that moment a high-ranking police officer (in a white shirt)
arrived and overheard the exchange. "Nobody had to check in their
laptop," he told his subordinates. "But the airline security told us
that they should," responded the young cop with the shaved head.
"We don't take security orders from the airline staff," said the senior
cop. "Yes, but the newspapers say that laptops should be checked in,"
insisted the young cop.
"What do we care what the newspapers say?" the officer replied. "We
take orders from Police HQ and those orders say that as long as laptops
are removed from their bags and inspected, they could be taken on to
the plane.
"So stop inconveniencing people and let them take the laptops on to
the plane."
The young cop obeyed the orders, but a feisty CY stewardess, on gate
duty, had heard the exchange started shouting at the cops.
"You can't do that. We have already forced half the passengers to hand
over their laptops and it would be unfair if the others are allowed
to take them onto the plane. That's just not right" The officer,
who was a true hero, stuck to his guns, saying "why should everyone
be inconvenienced?"
After he got a two minute tirade by the feisty stewardess about
treating all passengers in the same way, he gave in. Everyone had to
check in their laptops, not for security reasons, but for the sake
of equal treatment.
Cyprus Mail, Cyprus
Aug. 14, 2006
THE ONE MAN who stands head and shoulders above all the
recently-appointed ministers, despite being short and shunning high
heeled shoes, is the former mayor of Lefkara and EDEK vice-president
Sophocles Sophocleous, who was given the Justice and Public Order
Ministry portfolio.
In just a couple of months, Soph has become a household name thanks to
his insatiable appetite for publicity. You rarely turn the radio on,
during the morning, current affair zone shows, without hearing him
expressing an opinion about some news topic.
His five-minute monologues, which feature many fancy words and
important-sounding phrases, are delivered with such self-belief and
pomposity you would never have thought his previous job was as modest
village mukhtar. But now he has arrived on the bigger stage, enjoying
the exposure that his truly, dazzling political oratory deserves.
In this respect, he is another upholder of that fine EDEK tradition,
started by the party's founder and former leader, Dr Faustus Lyssarides
and kept alive by the latter's successor Yiannakis Omirou - using the
maximum amount of words to convey a minimum amount of thought. Being
a true socialist windbag, Soph will almost certainly succeed Omirou
when he steps down as leader in 2026.
Soph is from the same village as Dr Faustus which would support the
theory that his gift for rhetorical wizardry is not in his genes.
There must be something in the water of Lefkara, because, by the law
of probability, it is impossible for such a relatively small village
to produce two world class, natural-born, socialist, windbags within
40 years of each other.
PUBLICITY-MAD Soph has inaugurated a new way of doing things at the
ministry that ensures maximum media coverage for him. He has been
inviting journalists to sit in on meetings with different groups,
because he is a great believer in transparency, which leads to greater
personal publicity.
Ten days ago he invited hacks to attend his meeting with a delegation
of cabaret owners, who wanted to discuss the problems faced by the
pimping sector. What minister with any sense would have ever invited
a bunch of lowlifes who live off prostitution to his office?
Even if he felt obliged to see them, surely he should have kept the
meeting a carefully-guarded secret. But not Soph - he invited hacks
to the meeting so they could tell the world that our Minister of
Justice and Public Order is so open-minded he would even grant an
audience to owners of vice dens.
It gets better. The street-wise minister told the sleaze-merchants that
he knew what went on in cabarets and had given the cops instructions
to clamp down on the sexual exploitation of women. And if police
found that a cabaret was pushing women into prostitution it would be
closed down, "through the strict enforcement of the law", relating
to inadequate fire safety measures and lack of licences.
But if the cabarets did not engage in prostitution, the minister
would not insist on the strict enforcement of the law. It's a weird
kind of message he's sending out. If this ingenious plan works, next
month he should invite the Pancyprian Association of Drug Dealers to
his office and tell them that if they stopped selling drugs the cops
would not give them speeding tickets or arrest them for possession
of guns. And if the dealers behave, the cops could waive the strict
enforcement of the law for the odd murder or bomb attack as well.
BUT WHY had the cabaret owners asked for a meeting with the Justice
Minister? Apparently, there was too much competition from freelance
hookers and cabaret earnings were falling so they wanted the state
to help the freelancers find alternative employment.
As the lawyer representing the cabaret owners said, his clients
were concerned because the government was pushing foreign students
(Chinese in their majority) and asylum seekers into prostitution by
denying them work permits. It would not even allow them to work in
restaurants washing plates, said the lawyer, thus making prostitution
the only way for them to earn a living.
Yes, it's official - cabaret owners not only have a social conscience
but high morals as well. Unfortunately Soph, could do nothing as
work permits came under the authority of the interior ministry and
he could not help the cabaret owners' noble campaign to save asylum
seekers and students from the indignity of prostitution, even though
it pays much better than washing plates.
SUPER-SMART Soph Soph appears not to have understood what the meeting
was about. The cabaret owners were openly demanding help from the state
to reduce competition and protect their revenue from prostitution and
Soph was telling them that he would close them down if they continued
the sexual exploitation of women.
As he said: "I know what goes on in cabarets. I am not an Amerikanaki
(a naive American)."
THE EDUCATION Ministry has at long last issued an official statement
confirming that it would not give the remainder of the money owed to
director Panicos Chrysanthou for the completion of his film Akamas,
because he was in breach of his contract. According to the statement,
Chrysanthou had included a scene in the film that the ministry's Film
Advisory Council, a body safeguarding artistic freedom, had asked
him to leave out.
Chrysanthou, I am informed, is now trying to raise the cash (about
30,000 euros), needed for making copies of the film, from private
individuals, so that he can show it at the Venice Film Festival.
Incidentally, the ministry's announcement did not mention the fact
that the Advisory Council had written to Chrysanthou, instructing
him to withdraw Akamas from the Festival.
The decision not to give any more money for the film was taken by
education minister Pefkios Georgiades.
People who know him found it hard to believe that he could have taken
such a hard-line on the film as he is quite an arty and open-minded
chap that, normally, would not dream of behaving in such an illiberal
fashion.
A ministerial committee consisting of the Finance, Interior and
Education ministers had seen the film. Michalis Sarris and Andreas
Christou found nothing wrong with it and neither did Pefkios, in
private at least. However, Pefkios decided to raise the issue of the
contract and insist on the contentious scene being cut, because he
was afraid Akamas would provoke an outcry by nationalists, something
that was certain to have angered his friend the Ethnarch.
And rather than face the Ethnarch's righteous wrath he chose the
lesser of two evils - to be seen as a Stalinist bully who supports
censorship and clamps down on artistic freedom.
EARLIER this week, our establishment was contacted by a member of
the Cyprus State Orchestra who informed us that last week's item,
saying that the orchestra's director Spyros Pisinos did not want to
use the refurbished and revamped Nicosia Municipal Theatre because
of the poor acoustics was not correct.
While it was true that Pisinos had decided to use the Strovolos
Municipal Theatre instead, it was not because of the bad acoustics.
It was because the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOK) had priority
on booking dates for using the Nicosia theatre and the Orchestra had
to take the days left. The highly-strung Pisinos could never accept
playing second violin to THOK, as he is an orchestra conductor.
This does not mean that the acoustics of the revamped theatre are
satisfactory, especially for piano recitals and string quartets. When
the theatre was being refurbished, a well-connected music enthusiast
had arranged for a foreign expert on acoustics to visit Cyprus and
offer advice on what should be done.
A meeting was arranged with Mayor Zampelas, but it was cancelled at
the last minute, after the project's architect raised a fuss, because
she knew more about theatre acoustics than a man who had worked for
some of the best-known concert halls in the world.
THE CAMPAIGN for the election of a new Archbishop moved to war-ravaged
Lebanon this week as some of the candidates for the throne decided
to become international relief agencies. Paphos Bishop Chrysostomos
was taken to the Lebanon by a French military helicopter and took
with him 60,000 bucks which he distributed to representatives of
the different faiths (Latins, Orthodox, Shi'ite, Sunni). He had four
meetings in three hours and then boarded the chopper and returned to
the plantation.
Moneybags Kykkos Bishop Nikiforos, the front-runner of the
campaign after spending millions of the Kykkos monastery moullah on
purchasing support, did not go to the Lebanon himself, but he sent
his representative, Archimandrite Isaias Kykkotis, who also arrived
on Wednesday. He went to take delivery of the 100 tons of food,
medicine and water - collected by the Department for the Provision
of Humanitarian Help of Kykkos monastery and the Armenian Church -
that arrived on a Greek ship the following day.
There had been some squabbling over the sending of help to the
Lebanon. Chrysostomos said he had initially proposed that the Holy
Synod sent humanitarian but his fellow bishops decided that this
should be done at a later stage. Could their reticence have anything
to do with the fact that as head of the Synod Chrysostomos would have
taken most of the credit for this electoral Christian charity? He
was left with no choice but to undertake a personal initiative. It
had nothing to do with the elections, he assured us.
Meanwhile the fabulously wealthy Nikiforos Monastery had a special
department for offering international aid, which had been in operation
for 10 years. According to Kykkotis, Chrysostomos was informed, from
the first day of the war that the department was at the disposal of
the Synod if the bishops wanted to send aid.
Chrysostomos, who chairs the Synod, never got back to him, presumably
not wanting rival candidate, Nikiforos to take the credit for leading
the relief effort. So we had the ludicrous situation of two separate
Church relief missions to the Lebanon in two days.
IS DIKO seriously considering backing walrus lookalike, Ouranios
Ioannides as its candidate for Nicosia mayor? Is the party so short of
adequate members that it has to resort to backing a horribly mediocre,
over-the-hill, superannuated, political opportunist who has served
as a DISY deputy and Clerides minister?
This refusal of our politicians to retire is really irritating.
Ouranios had his stint as a deputy and several years as a monumentally
ineffective education minister. Despite earning a good living -
and now a generous pension - from the taxpayer for all those years,
he also stood in last May's parliamentary elections as DISY candidate.
He failed to get elected, so now he has gone to DIKO in the hope that
it would back him as a mayoral candidate for Nicosia. And the idiots
at DIKO are trying to persuade their alliance partners to accept
this political drifter, who could not organise an orgy in a brothel,
as a credible candidate. Why? It must be because of his good looks.
A WORD of sympathy for former Minister of Agriculture Timis Efthymiou
who spoke of his deep hurt, in an interview with Simerini, after
he was unceremoniously dumped by the Ethnarch in the last cabinet
reshuffle. Timis, spoke with the bitterness of a spurned lover,
about his treatment by Tassos, whom he accused of "ingratitude and
arrogance".
But if anyone is ungrateful it is Timis. He came from nowhere and
served as a minister for three years after fooling the Ethnarch about
the number of votes his joke of a party - Movement of Free Citizens -
would bring him. But after May's parliamentary elections, when the
Free Citizens failed to win a seat, the Ethnarch realised that he
had no need for Timis and sent him home.
Timis must be a complete Amerikanaki, if he thought Tassos would
sacrifice a ministry on someone who commanded an electoral strength
of one per cent because he was generously handing out state subsidies
to Paphos farmers.
THE PLANTATION'S airports were put on high alert after the news about
the possible terrorist plot against planes leaving Heathrow. However
one customer who flew out of Laranca yesterday morning informed us
that there was a little confusion among cops and ground staff over
what should be done about lab-tops.
On arriving at the gate for boarding, the man was told by a young,
zealous cop with a shaved head, in charge of the baggage scanner,
that he could not take the laptop onto the plane and had to give to
the ground staff.
This was strange, because the passenger had been told at the
checking-in desk that he could take the laptop with him. Others,
who had arrived earlier were queuing up to hand in their laptops to
a diminutive Cyprus Airways ground stewardess.
At that moment a high-ranking police officer (in a white shirt)
arrived and overheard the exchange. "Nobody had to check in their
laptop," he told his subordinates. "But the airline security told us
that they should," responded the young cop with the shaved head.
"We don't take security orders from the airline staff," said the senior
cop. "Yes, but the newspapers say that laptops should be checked in,"
insisted the young cop.
"What do we care what the newspapers say?" the officer replied. "We
take orders from Police HQ and those orders say that as long as laptops
are removed from their bags and inspected, they could be taken on to
the plane.
"So stop inconveniencing people and let them take the laptops on to
the plane."
The young cop obeyed the orders, but a feisty CY stewardess, on gate
duty, had heard the exchange started shouting at the cops.
"You can't do that. We have already forced half the passengers to hand
over their laptops and it would be unfair if the others are allowed
to take them onto the plane. That's just not right" The officer,
who was a true hero, stuck to his guns, saying "why should everyone
be inconvenienced?"
After he got a two minute tirade by the feisty stewardess about
treating all passengers in the same way, he gave in. Everyone had to
check in their laptops, not for security reasons, but for the sake
of equal treatment.