TWO-AND-A-HALF years may have passed since he lost his power and glory, as well as the undeserved public respect he enjoyed because of his position rather than for his moral stature, but Nik the First still refuses to accept that he is, like the rest of us, just another nobody of no importance.

Astonishingly, he is entertaining these delusions of statesman gravitas when he is being investigated for large-scale corruption, nobody believes a word he says and the mob that brown-nosed him when he was prez have abandoned him. Even his protégé, Prezniktwo, who owes him his election is now snubbing him.

None of this appears to have registered with him, which explains why he is under the illusion that he can still issue orders to the Disy leader, Annita Demetriou, and reprimand her in public for not obeying him. It is quite disgusting behaviour but only to be expected from a man never renowned for his nobility and grace.

He shabbily decided to stab the Prezita in the back at a time when she was being undermined from inside the party, by an opportunist eyeing her post and from outside by hacks producing unrelentingly negative reports about her on behalf of Prezniktwo who considers her a threat and wants her destroyed.

THE NASTY has-been’s latest gripe against the Prezita was her distancing of the party from the “important achievements”, such as the “renaissance of the Cyprus Republic”, of his 10-year rule.

What did he want the party to do? Issue an announcement every day celebrating the golden passports industry from which his family made millions of euros? Or perhaps his personal decision to award the contract for the Vassiliko LNG terminal, without tenders, to a company that had never undertaken such a project and eventually quit the project?

The cost of the company’s failure to build a terminal is estimated to be a few hundred million, while the LNG will not arrive for another two years. Under the circumstances, distancing Disy from the Anastasiades government was the least Prezita should have done. Cutting all links would have been the more sensible solution.

THERE was another distancing that Nik brought up in his letter of self-pity to Prezita, which he leaked to Phil a few days after he sent it because Annita failed to distribute it to the members of the political bureau as he had commanded her to do.

The party had also distanced itself from Nik the Great “with regard to the handling of the great national issue”, by adopting the view of “witnesses, who for their own reasons are always prepared to adopt, for the supposed nation ‘good’ the narrative of Turkey”.

He was pissed off because the party did not defend him when a speaker at an anti-occupation gathering in Dherynia blamed him for the collapse of the talks in Crans-Montana. In his letter to Prezita he attached the UN minutes of the meeting in Crans-Montana so she and the party could understand that he was not to blame for anything, not even for telling the then Turkish foreign minister Cavusoglu that he supported a two-state solution.

Now that his negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis is no longer prepared to lie on his behalf (as he had dutifully done for seven years until 2024) about the collapse of the talks, Nik wants the Prezita to become his Cyprob liar-in-chief.

Why does he not defend himself against these unfair accusations and expect the Prezita and Disy to do it for him? Is it because he knows nobody believes a word he says?

APART from Nik, Annita also had to deal with party in-fighting between party officials (not deputies) promoting their personal agendas. It involved a row on X between a Michalis Ioannides, who is obviously eyeing her post, and Petros Demetriou, both of whom were beneficiaries on Nik I rusfeti.

The former, son of the late Ouranios Ioannides a former Disy minister and deputy, Michalis was made chairman of Cyta while Demetriou was under-secretary to the president in the latter part of Nik I’s reign and loved to use his power.

Their bickering is irrelevant, but Ioannides did not cover himself in glory when, as part of this row, he accused the party’s leadership of passing on the register of Disy members to Akel in the 2023 presidential elections.

This got the self-important, jobs-worth commissioner for the protection of personal data, Irini Loizidou Nikolaidou, seeking explanations because she read the gossip in the media. She will meddle anywhere to get public attention.

IN THE END, the party issued a statement and denied it had given its register of members to Akel, although hacks briefed by Ioannides pointed out that the register may have been handed over by an individual.

Even this proved a load of nonsense. A member of the Mavroyiannis election staff, Vasilis Protopapas, categorically declared that no register of Disy members had been given. So where had Ioannides, who is lawyer and should know better than make serious claims without evidence to back them, got his information? Did Nik I tip him off?

Ioannides’ ambition must be much stronger than his intellect if he thought this ludicrous story, which was a betrayal of his party, would help him advance his quest for the Disy leadership. Maybe Nik I has promised to help him as long as he carries on undermining the Prezita.

UNDER its new ownership, Costas ‘the moro’ Kleanthous, Phil appears to have become a fully paid-up supporter of Prezniktwo. In the past there were two or three journalists that acted as unofficial spokesmen and cheerleaders of Prezniktwo, but now the whole medium appears to have thrown its weight behind the Paphite.

Phil’s daily negative reports about Disy is quite clearly a service being offered to the presidential palace which is on a mission to undermine the Prezita because she refused to surrender her party to Nik II.

When Disy spokesman Onoufrios Koullas dared to accuse Phil of “hostile” coverage of the party, he must have touched a raw nerve, because the paper’s editor-in-chief devoted his column to a self-righteous rant arguing that nobody had the right to criticise Phil.

Koullas, he wrote, “should be ashamed to take his tongue for walk about a historic newspaper such as Phileleftheros”. The message is very clear: Phil can dish out the criticism but nobody is allowed to reciprocate because it is blasphemy. Phil hacks, like deities, are above criticism.

OUR FOREIGN ministry scored a big triumph this week when it forced the resignation of the Labour MP, Afzal Khan, from the position of UK trade envoy to Turkey because of his visit to the pseudo-state and his meeting with Ersin Tatar in the pseudo-office.

There was a lot of gloating by the foreign ministry, which issued an announcement saying the resignation “constitutes an important development, which at this moment in time, has even greater significance”.

The reason. “It sends, as a result, the powerful signal that there is no margin of tolerance, nor a case of a subdued reaction from us.” Khan made loads of excuses for his visit, pointing out that some 20 British MPs has visited the north in the past without facing such a backlash.

Back then however, we did not have a tough and unforgiving foreign minister like Constantinos Kombos defending out national interests.

LAST WEEK we wrote about the bank employees union, Etyk, demanding 15 to 20 per cent of the banks’ super-profits for its overpaid members. We also noted that as we are not a communist state, companies have no obligation to distribute profits among their workers, as Etyk was demanding.

A skettos drinking regular pointed out something that needs to be mentioned. Some months ago, Etyk sold its shareholding in Hellenic Bank to Eurobank for a cool €243 million. Its profit from the sale of the shares it bought for peanuts during the meltdown of the economy may have been €200m.

Why is it not distributing these profits among its members and instead, demands the banks do what Etyk has refused to do.