Tales from the Coffeeshop: Leather jackets and livestock crises

THE QUESTION anyone with half a brain asks is why our authorities had not started vaccinating sheep, goats and cows when the outbreak of foot and mouth disease was reported in the occupied area in December.

Our veterinary services decided to ask for vaccines from the EU two months after the outbreak of the disease in the north, when animals in farms in the Larnaca district were taken ill. Was it not the sensible thing to start vaccinating the Greek Cypriot animals in December to prevent the current fiasco, which has led to the culling of some 15,000 so far?

The answer to both questions was provided on Thursday by an official of the veterinary services, Sotiria Georgiadou. Speaking on Trito radio, she stated that according to EU rules, no country could embark on a vaccination programme without reporting an infection case. We never reported a case to the EU until February, because the cases were in the north, which is not the Republic, said Georgiadou.

To receive vaccinations from the EU, the veterinary service of the country had to report a case. So, we waited until we had our own recognised outbreak and as a reward for doing things by the EU rules some 15,000 animals were culled in the last few weeks.

IT WAS another bureaucratic triumph of the EU, which nevertheless sent 500,000 vaccines to the ‘state’ it does not recognise, but considers it a different country from our Kyproulla.

So now, the government must deal with furious livestock farmers who are carrying out protests, blocking roads and threatening disruptive measures, because they disagree with the EU rule that stipulated the culling of all animals in a farm as soon as a single case appears.

The government misled the farmers for a few days, the Prez giving them false hope at a meeting last Sunday, when he told them that he had asked the president of the Commission for a derogation, while knowing this would never happen. Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou told the House on Tuesday that the protocols would never change.

Anyway, to avoid taking any responsibility, the Prez arranged for the Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, Oliver Varhelyi to visit on Friday and tell the farmers the bad news.

On Saturday the farmers blocked roads to prevent the vets with the killer injections from heading to their farms, insisting they would not allow the culling of all their animals. I fear the foot and mouth saga is set to play and play.

THE TWO big parties, Disy and Akel, used the foot and mouth fiasco to call for the resignation or sacking of Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou, which was a bit unfair considering the fiasco could not be blamed on her general cluelessness.

As Soteria Georgiadou said, the services just followed the EU protocols and protected our halloumi exports, for a couple of months longer. What could have Panayiotou done differently, under the circumstances?

If the parties want her sacked, they could bring up her stupendous failure in dealing with water shortage, which she has known about for more than a year and did nothing about it, except coming up with the ingenious idea, a few weeks ago, of every household cutting down their water consumption by 10 per cent.

I think she is safe because she enjoys the high protection of the Prez’s better half, ever since they joined forces to produce juice for schools with the oranges grown in the grounds of the presidential palace. What more could a prez ask of an agriculture minister?

MEANWHILE Prezniktwo continued his posing as a great war leader on Monday when he played host to his allies – President Emmanuel Macron and prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – at the Papandreou air base surrounded by military hardware.

They spoke to journalists with an assault helicopter in the background, and Macron declared: “I am here to tell you that when someone attacks Cyprus, they attack Europe… we want to express our full solidarity towards Cyprus that found itself a target last week.”

Had our prez not informed his buddy that Cyprus was not and is not a target? He did not have to, because if Kyproulla was a target, it is doubtful the French president would have paid a visit. He would probably have expressed his solidarity over the phone.

THE MILITARY posturing did not end at the air base. The prez was subsequently taken by helicopter to the Greek frigate Kimon, which was sent to our seas to protect the country that is not a target.

Accompanied by Mitsotakis he toured to ship and spoke to members of the crew, looking cool in a leather jacket he wore for the occasion. He was wearing a normal jacket at the airbase but put on the leather jacket for the photo-shoot on the ship, the styling being that of a tough military guy.

THE CRYING of the hoteliers over the sharp fall in bookings, mercifully, brought the prez’s war leader role-playing to a premature end.

Hoteliers, who until three weeks ago were preparing for another bumper year with record profits, saw their dreams shattered when the two drones hit Akrotiri, and our Prez started behaving as if Kyproulla was in the centre of the warzone.

Now they have seen bookings collapse – a manager of a hotel chain informed us that bookings were 60 Per cent down compared to the same period in 2025 – they are demanding the Prez stops playing the war leader and inviting war ships to the area.

To appease them he invited them to the presidential pad on Wednesday, to tell them that an international communications firm had been hired to change Kyproulla’s picture abroad and persuade people that we are nowhere near the fighting, we are not a target, we have no involvement in the wars, our role has always been humanitarian and that we are always part of the solution a never part of the problem.

If this does not revive hotel bookings nothing will.

THE WAR forced the interior ministry to check out the civil defence shelters that people would use in the highly unlikely event of an attacked on the recognized part of the centre of the universe. Its findings were very Cyprus.

Between 2000 and 2013 the state spent €4.1m on the creation of 2,300 shelters with room for 250,000 people. The money was used to place metal doors, toilets, water tanks etc in these basements. During the inspection last week, it was found that some 200 of these civil defence shelters are no longer available – some buildings have been demolished, and some have been converted into flats.

Another 288 have had their use change, reducing the number of shelters by about 500, without the interior ministry knowing about it.

CREDIT for this mess goes to the director of Civil Defence, Maria Papa, who had been telling the interior ministry that all the shelters were in perfect order. She had been carrying out random checks of the shelters and assuring her bosses at the ministry that everything was in good shape.

Papa was on Thursday removed from her post and transferred to the audit office because the law allows the sacking of public parasites only when they are caught stealing. Gross incompetence or total uselessness doing a job is not punishable because a parasite cannot help being a bit dumb.

COMMIE women marked International Woman’s Day last Sunday by carrying out an anti-war march and demanding the removal of the British bases. It was ironic that even on Women’s Day, the protesting women of Akel were addressed by a man – comrade leader Stef Stef.

THE GOVERNMENT’S most successful bus service – that brings commuters into Nicosia from GSP stadium – is set to be terminated on March 24, because the company cannot find drivers for the buses. Here is a metaphysical question: Why does nobody want to be a bus driver today?