Tales from the Coffeeshop: The problems of recognising Cyprus’ role of stability in the ME

MINI ME wasted no time in explaining to the dumb members of the populace why the invitation extended to our Prez to participate in President Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza was of momentous importance for our Kyproulla.

The invitation letter was published by the Hellas Journal website that is run by one of the Prez’s most zealous cheerleaders, allowing Mini Me, who did not leak the letter, to get on his high horse and start galloping.

With the invitation, he said, “the role of Cyprus in the Middle East region was being recognised, something that acquires particular political weight when this recognition comes from the United States, confirming the steady course of the upgrade of the international standing of our country as a trustworthy, reliable and responsible factor of peace and cooperation.”

He did not stop here. The Republic, he added, “approaches such initiatives substantively, based on its capability of substantive contribution to stability and the peace effort, as it had done at the international conference for Gaza in Egypt, where it submitted specific and realistic proposals on how it could help in the implementation of a 20-point peace plan.”

Is Mini Me so pathologically deluded he actually believes that anyone, even of minor importance read our “specific and realistic proposals” at the international conference? And that this made our Prez indispensable to Trump’s Board of Peace?

THE CELEBRATIONS about the recognition of our political weight proved a bit premature, because events conspired against our Prez making a substantive contribution to stability and the peace effort.

There would be no proposals from our Nik on how the Gaza peace plan would work because he was forced to decline Trump’s invitation, which he had initially accepted, and was not at the Board of Peace launch in Davos on Thursday, that was mainly attended by the leaders of authoritarian regimes.

This was because Trump’s Greenland grab and his threat of punitive tariffs against countries that opposed it caused a major rift with the EU and other Western democracies. Hungary and Bulgaria were the only EU member-states attending the launch and there was no way our Prez could go, regardless of how flattered he was by the invitation.

The invitation had caused great stress at the presidential palace, according to press reports, because the Prez did not want Trump to think he had been snubbed just when he had recognised the major role our Nik plays in the Middle East. The foreign ministry made some excuse to the US about the Prez’s absence.

The good news is that his absence may have gone unnoticed as nobody heard Trump asking ‘where is Nikos?’ during the launch ceremony.

WITH Trump backing down on Greenland and the tariffs, there is now hope that the Board of Peace would soon meet again to discuss the Gaza peace plan and our Prez would be able to make his substantive contribution. How many of the 50 countries invited will eventually show up is unclear; there were just 19 present on Thursday.

More importantly, Kyproulla could become a permanent member of the Board of Peace, something that would allow it to draft a just and fair settlement of the Cyprob, given that the UN, which always favoured the Turks and is pretty ineffective, will be sidelined and replaced by the Board, the president of which will be Trump for life.

The only snag is that there is a big admission fee for permanent membership – one billion bucks. But just think of the positive contribution the Prez as the pillar of stability would make to the promotion of world peace and cooperation if he had a permanent seat on the Board.

THE Independent Social Support Body should be re-activated and start collecting money for our permanent membership fee instead of wasting its funds on students. I would also hire Giorkos Lakkotrypis in a full-time role and put him in charge of the fund-raising.

I would also suggest we bring back Philippa under whose leadership the fund increased its revenue by 500 per cent, if her resignation as chairperson was meant to be taken seriously.

Two weeks after her resignation was posted on Facebook, she still features on the Social Support Body website as president. Perhaps the Prez had refused to accept her resignation and kept her as president against her wishes, in which case she could start raising funds tout de suite.

This is assuming her other half has not already abolished the body as he had threatened to do immediately after his Missus claimed she had stepped down.

THE HEAD honchos of the big construction firm Cyfield are still reeling from Videogate. The video, in which the CEO Giorgos Chrysochos played a leading role, it turns out, could have very adverse consequences for the Cyfield group’s power station in Mari, which was meant to have started producing electricity in 2025.

The problem for the company is that it has not secured all the necessary permits to operate, some of its applications rejected by the authorities. Part of the station is allegedly built on Turkish Cypriot-owned land, it has set up more turbines than it has authorisation for, and its operation could cause problems for the EAC station in the same area.

This being Cyprus, the authorities could have turned a blind eye to the irregularities, and the power station could have started operations after which it would be too late to stop it. After the video, in which the CEO said he donated some €250,000 a year to the government’s charities and that he spoke so often to the Prez he was “like a girlfriend,” how could the government to tell the relevant state authorities to ignore the irregularities and allow the power station to operate?

The accusations of corruption would be flying from all directions.

SPEAKING about Videogate, Phil’s Sunday preacher, the holier than thou Michalis Ignatiou, wrote an impassioned defence of the Prez in his last sermon, decreeing that Prez Nik was clean as he ‘gave no indication’ to the great journo of any impropriety. The video was “fabricated”, the work of the enemies of Kyproulla, he said, concluding and naming the Russians as prime suspects.

He recounted a meeting with the Greek banking scumbag Andreas Vgenopoulos, who had plundered and eventually bankrupted Laiki Bank. Vgenopoulos invited Ig to his office “and explained to me with details how he gave money to the corrupt political and economic system of Cyprus,” he wrote.

How had a morally upright hack like Ig accepted an invitation to Vgenopoulos’ office and been taken into the crook’s confidence? And why did he not expose the corrupt politicians and businessmen that were being bribed by the crook? Just asking.

MEANWHILE, Ig’s Phil stablemate Costas Venizelos, who often writes information given to him by Kyp, reported last Sunday that the “occupation army has a plan for seizing the buffer zone.” This claim was based on an “increase in episodes and military moves in the buffer zone by occupation troops,” he wrote.

It may require a big leap of the imagination to arrive at the conclusion that the seizure of the buffer zone was imminent, but who cares. What is bizarre is that nobody took any notice of this frightening revelation. In fact, nobody even reproduced these allegations, which according to the writer’s information were “intensely worrying the UN.”

The story certainly did not worry any Greek Cypriots, probably because if we were on the Board of Peace, the Turks would not dare mess with us and incur President Trump’s wrath.

EARLIER in the week, Nikoletta Tsikini, an Odysseas party member, who was charged for 13 unflattering posts against our thin-skinned first lady, was scheduled to appear on a CyBC TV show, only to be told the day before that she had been uninvited.

She was informed that as Odysseas appeared on the state broadcaster’s shows almost every day, it was unjustified to have another Alma party member as a guest. Predictably, she claimed she had been gagged after the intervention of the first lady.

I cannot believe our state broadcaster would ever take orders from the presidential palace.

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