17 SUNDAY MAIL • July 1, 2012
Coffeeshop
Communist solidarity not what it used to be THREE DAYS after our comrade President announced that “our economy is doing well”, his government applied to Brussels for a bailout, confirming our establishment’s medical diagnosis, last week, that he had stopped residing in the real world for some time now. The disease is contagious, because on Monday morning, just a few hours before the formal request for a bailout, government spokesman Stef-Stef was on a radio show defending comrade Tof ’s assertion, insisting it was a justified comment. Only the minister with the wellgroomed moustache has not been affected by the no-contact-withreality epidemic, which afflicts members of the government and Akelites, but is being continuously reprimanded by the comrade for stubbornly maintaining a grip on reality. The comrade boss yelled at Shiarly, at last Monday’s cabinet meeting, for supporting everything the hated technocrats were proposing. He yelled at him again at Tuesday’s meeting of the party leaders, who were shocked with the way the comrade was bullying his minister. All Shiarly had said was that our EU partners had pointed out that Cyprus suffered from serious, structural weaknesses that needed to be tackled. The comrade aggressively told him not to listen to and repeat what the foreigners were telling him. The nasty foreigners, poisoning Shiarly’s mind with nonsense about structural weaknesses etc, could not be trusted because they had too much contact with reality, IN TOF’S fantasy world, Russia always comes to the rescue of Kyproulla with loadsamoney to bail us out. Only this time Russia has been playing pello, as they say in my village. After the deputy finance minister 10 days ago, this week it was the turn of Russia’s finance minister to say he had no knowledge of a request for a loan from Kyproulla. This was because the request had been made “at the highest level” explained deputy government fantasist Christos Christofides, without elaborating. We can only guess that the comrade called his good friend and former comrade President Putin directly and asked for ‘tri milliarda’. Putin avoided saying ‘nyet’. He said he would help but then completely forgot about the matter. The comrade was too embarrassed to call and remind him, which is why he got hacks first to ask the deputy finance minister and then the finance minister if they knew anything about the loan.
ed the second Greek bailout and will be in charge of the IMF delegation arriving in Kyproulla. She was the author of a 10-page document which suggested, according to the Greek media, the sacking of 150,000 public servants by 2015. She is certain to displace Big Bad Al from the top of the unpopularity chart. About time, as the Aussie had become too complacent and in the last few months had done and said nothing to justify staying at the number one spot. It would be a welcome change to have a woman as our number one hate figure, indicating that sexism is a thing of the past. DOES anyone of the head honchos of the Bank of Cyprus know what is going on at their bank or are they just taking us for a ride? First they said that they would cover their re-capitalisation requirements through a share issue. Then there was problem with the big Russian shareholder, Dmitry Rybolovlev, who threatened not to exercise his rights unless a new law on trusts was passed. Deputies passed the law but he still did not buy any new shares. The B of C admitted it was only €200 million short of its target, but would raise the capital by selling stakes in its insurance companies. It failed to find a buyer, but shareholders were told at the bank’s AGM that it was short by €200 million. Less than a week later it issued an announcement saying that it needed half a billion for its recapitalisation. Had its accountants not noticed that the bank was short by €300 million a week earlier? We are not talking about a couple of thousand misplaced euro, which the world’s most meticulous accountant might have missed. Failing to spot a shortage of 300 million must take a hell of a lot of effort, considering they always notice when a customer does not make a €200 monthly loan repayment on time and send out a stern reminder.
He hoped word would get back to Putin from the finance ministry and he would remember to send us the moollah. Alas we are still waiting, while the nasty austerity peddlers of the Troika are due to arrive any day. LAST WEEKEND, the comrade’s most trusted minister, Neoclis Sylikiotis, was dispatched to Beijing in the hope that he would persuade his Chinese comrades to help us out with a few billion yuan, but sadly communist solidarity is not what it used to be. The president’s fixer asked for a bilateral loan and a direct investment in the Popular Bank, which urgently needed (by last night) €1.8 billion for its recapitalisation. He also took the smooth-talking Popular Bank chairman Michalis Sarris, with him to help. On his return to Kyproulla, the minister, whose looks could have made him a Hollywood film star but he chose instead to serve AKEL, announced there were ‘positive signs’ from his Beijing contacts. He boasted that he had even got his Chinese comrades to sign a document by which they undertook to give their final answers within five days. Is there such little trust between communist comrades nowadays that they had to sign a contract to ensure they kept their word to give a simple answer on time? COMMUNIST solidarity, as we wrote above, is not what it used to be. AKEL chief Andros had also been sent to Beijing in order to beg his commie comrades for a loan and direct investment in the Popular Bank, but he did not make them sign any document. He returned home, having been told to get Cypriot officials to contact some Chinese bankers he had been introduced to during his visit to discuss the details. For weeks our guys tried every form of communication but could not get through to the Chinese that were supposed to help us out. This was why Sylikiotis was subsequently sent to Beijing and the reason he got his comrades to sign
The Comrade may not have received the red-carpet treatment in China and Russia, but it was rolled out in Brussels, where he was happy to pose a contract setting an asphyxiating time-frame for a ‘final answer’. This ‘final answer’, according to Tof ’s fixer, should have been given within five days, by last Thursday. Had the Chinese snubbed their Kyproullan comrades again, or had they honoured their signature and given the ‘final answer’, which the government chose not to make public to avoid embarrassment? Whatever the answer, one thing is certain – you can’t trust commies from any country. COMRADE Tof is finding out the hard way that the neo-liberal, market-worshipping, sub-human, blood-sucking, capitalists of the Eurogroup are much more trustworthy than his commie comrades. They gave a positive ‘final answer’ to his request for a loan within a couple of days and by tomorrow their evil representatives will be here to start work on the terms and conditions. That is what I call good and reliable customer service, something that commie countries continue to be rubbish at. The comrade is too much of a fanatic to acknowledge that the capitalists of the EU would be helping us avoid bankruptcy. Speaking to a gathering of Akelites, on Monday night, a few hours after his government decided to seek a bailout, he turned into Fidel Castro and urged them not to give up the fight for socialism. “Raise the flags, as the late Ezekias Papaioannou (AKEL chief for 30 years and obedient servant of the Kremlin) would say. We are fighters, co-fighters for peace, democracy, social progress and finally socialism.” He concluded with a message of
hope. “And you should be certain that the fate of the world is not soul-destroying and catastrophic for people capitalism.” It will just be the fate of Kyproulla, we hope, once the Troika he invited finalises its people-friendly austerity package. OUR NEO-LIBERAL establishment, having always been a staunch supporter of soul-destroying capitalism, would like to welcome the Troika and hope its members will experience the traditional friendliness and hospitality we Cypriots extend to visitors, especially those with lots of money to spend. We hope they will abolish all the privileges enjoyed at our expense by the public parasites, bring their pay in line with the private sector, arrange the exiling of all union bosses who are responsible for the economy’s lack of competitiveness, order the privatisation of semi-governmental organisations and cut the wages of Cyprus Airways pilots by 50 per cent. We hope that by the time they finish with us, we will have a model neo-liberal economy in which the market is king. And promise to give full credit to the comrade Tof for his big contribution towards the establishment of capitalist paradise. BIG BAD Al should brace himself for some bad news. He is unlikely to stay at the top of the ‘foreigners we love to hate’ chart for much longer. The media has already found a new candidate for the top position in the chart and she is a woman – IMF economist Delia Velculescu. Velculescu was the IMF representative of the Troika that draft-
PERHAPS the B of C head honchos have been feeling the pressure being applied on the banks by the Akelite Governor of the Central Bank Dr Panicos Demetriades. The new Gov seems to be loyally following the party directive to punish the banks, the exposure of which to the Greek market, is the only reason – as comrade and his spokesmen never tire of reminding – that we had to apply for a bailout. The speech Dr Panicos gave to TEPAK on Thursday night could have been written by the AKEL Central Committee. He tore into the banks, which had been run badly, promised to undertake a major clean-up operation, cut their size and order an investigation of their loan portfolios. As an AKEL spokesman, he expressed opposition to the European Commission’s suggestion of placing co-operative banks – run and controlled by AKEL - under the supervision of the Central Bank, because they were being monitored by another very good state service. They were well-run and healthy organisations, he said. If this was the case, why did he not want them to be placed under the Central Bank’s supervision? Perhaps then he would have to investigate the loan portfolios of the co-op banks, something AKEL does not want to happen. TODAY is a very proud day for Kyproulla as we take over the presidency of the EU. We would like to wish our government a very successful presidency and express the wish it will run the EU a bit better than it has run our country. We also hope the Union will not need a bailout in December, when the comrade will have completed our presidency’s mission to build a ‘better Europe’.