Tales from the Coffeeshop: Some ministers will say anything to win popular approval

THE CYPRUS Mail made the big time this week, having featured in one of the Facebook rants of the hottest ticket on social media, Annie Alexui, because it had referred to her as a crackpot and someone with mental health issues.

I was the one who made these unflattering comments, which Alexui did not appreciate, as she made clear. “They (CM) played the doctor and said I was psychologically unhinged, but I have been examined by a host of doctors and they all said I was in perfect shape. And the best, they send me a message asking for an interview.”

And then she asked: “Over there at the Cyprus Mail, who’s the psychologically unhinged one – I who have been consistent in my views all these years, or you who write articles against me and then implore me for an interview?”

Dear Annie, I apologise that you took offence at my remarks which were not based on any medical reasons as I have no medical knowledge. I came to my conclusion because of those ridiculously huge glasses you wear that I think no sane person should be seen in except at a fancy-dress party.

REGARDLESS of what a psychologically unhinged person like myself might think, the truth is that most Cypriots have come to regard Alexui the fount of truth and wisdom, whose every incoherent sentence must be taken seriously, by ministers, cops and hacks.

When a friend of mine started sending me her posts, I thought she was an AI-generated personality created by Russia’s FSB to harm the Republic, which had so harshly cut its ties with Mother Russia and fell into the arms of the Yanks, with stories of high level corruption and graft.

Her stories were about corrupt cops, who worked for organised crime, ran drugs and covered up crimes, but I was wrong about AI. She is a human being, living in Moscow, reportedly, having been given asylum by the Russian government, which presumably pays her rent and living expenses as she does not seem to have a job other than posting rants on Facebook.

THE NEW, tough guy, Justice Minister Costas Fytiris, has been taking Alexui’s allegations very seriously, despite the fact the police have issued 13 arrest warrants against her for spreading fake news.

This has not deterred Fytiris, who told a lunchtime TV show on Friday that he had come up with his own ideas for her giving statements to the cops. There were three options, he said. Someone could go to the police and give a statement on her behalf, but she rejected this idea. A second option was to send cops to Moscow so she could give them a statement, while the “the third option was to give a statement via a lawyer, or give a statement to me and keep a copy.”

This is beyond belief. Some woman, in funny spectacles, based in another country, is making wild allegations about events in Kyproulla and the populist justice minister is publicly discussing ways in which he would take delivery of these for the police to investigate them.

This is the spell Alexui has over all the idiots in Kyproulla.

TOUGH GUY Fytiris is even willing to send cops abroad to get a statement from the woman who is wanted for spreading fake information. He admitted on the show there were 13 arrest warrants against Alexui in force.

Fytiris, however, underlined his commitment to rule of law, by declaring “I think there are ways for these warrants to be sidelined.” Some ministers will say anything – even that that they are above the law – to win popular approval.

Meanwhile Alexui has also said she would take the republic to the European Court of Human Rights “for the violation of my human rights.” Kyproulla, she said on Sigma TV, was no longer her country.

“For me, my country is Russia, that helped me heal myself, to gain self-confidence and not to be afraid. Cyprus is a hostile place that disgusts me,” she said. If only they sold some decent pairs of glasses in Russia so we would not think she is a crackpot.

THERE has been no let-up to Phil’s merciless assault on the deposed Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos. Such a character annihilation has never before been witnessed in Kyproulla’s media.

In the last six days, for example, the main story on the Philenews website has been about some new wrongdoing or some new investigation against Phed. Such is the obsession with the man, that Philenews should be renamed Phednews.

Apart from the rape and wife-beating allegations, the paper carried stories about Phed giving a Turkish Cypriot property to someone not eligible, that he hired people at high wages irregularly, that he took €1.5m from staff pension fund unlawfully to build student housing.

He was eventually given the right to deny these allegations in the Saturday edition of Phednews, which had new allegations against him. He was using the car provided by the municipality for the mayor for non-service related purposes. Is there any public official that is not guilty of this?

I would not be surprised, one of these days, to read in Phednews that Phed was a close buddy of Jeffrey Epstein and had organised sex parties for him in Paphos with teenage Paphite girls, back in 2017.

SIDEKICK of the Prez and former Strovolos mayor Andreas Papacharalambous, being an old English School boy, attended the opening of the exhibition of archival photos from the school in 1900 to 1960 at CVAR in old Nicosia.

Papacharalambous, who is hoping to revive his political career by standing in the parliamentary elections for Elam, was asked by another old boy at the exhibition how a graduate of the English School could have joined a fascist party. The idea that all English School graduates are open-minded democrats is a bit far-fetched but that is a matter for another time.

The response of the former mayor was along the lines of “Yes I went to the English School and I am also an LSE graduate and my wife is an Oxford graduate and we are proud to support Elam.” Which just goes to show that degrees from top universities are no marker of high intelligence.

My question is how a proud, Greek nationalist party like Elam will have as a parliamentary candidate a man with such low regard for Greek education he chose the British education system?  He could market himself as Elam’s only British-educated, Anglophile candidate.

THE DELUSIONS of grandeur from which our Prez has been suffering since his election are contagious. Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos has also been displaying some symptoms recently, but on Monday it became obvious that there is no cure for him either.

He gave an interview to the far-right news website Breitbart, in which he said that President Trump would be welcome in Kyproulla and that a visit “would be a great opportunity to see how things have been done in our part of the world.”

Cyprus is now focusing foreign policy on the EU and US, while maintaining an “extremely useful regional role” with the Arab world and Israel, Komos said before adding: “So, we are willing to play the role, to act as a point of entry, a point of contact, someone with whom you can have these kinds of conversations, depending on the file. And it’s a country that doesn’t have any skin in the game in relation to the big issues.”

This is just a small token of the platitudes used by Kombos which were so many they must have made our Prez red with envy.