I HEAR one of the two contenders for the Disy presidential candidacy, George Pamboridi,s has got the butter-boy blues, just a few weeks before the party vote.
The butter-boy blues (voutiropedomarazia in Greek) often hit members of the higher social strata when they find out that their comfortable life of entitlement and privilege has deprived them of access to the great unwashed when they need it. And you cannot win an election without a bit of contact with the masses.
Poor old Pamboridis, the scion of a wealthy family, being a born and bred English School voutiropedo socialising in the Nicosia salons and Beba is completely out of touch with the Disy membership of the countryside and having trouble accessing the villager vote.
He does not know any of Disy’s village big shots who could arrange gatherings of party members for him to speak to in the nationalist kafenes of the village, assuming it has not been taken over by Costa or Coffeehouse.
From what I hear, he has been asking his Nicosia chums if they have contacts or relatives in the bigger villages to help him out, but they merely deepened his butter-boy blues.
PAMBORIDIS has a Plan B. He has been arranging appearances on as many TV day-time news shows as possible and participating in podcasts in the hope he would be seen by the Disy villagers and impress them.
In these appearances he is usually outspoken, lashing out against Averof and the party, in the belief that his views will also be covered by the news websites and newspapers. He often talks in the Cypriot dialect to appeal to the Disy horkates watching him and dispel the view that he is a snobby Nicosia butter-boy, that looks down on the masses.
How successful this method has been nobody knows but Pamboridis might be undermining his chances by being permanently angry in public. His self-righteousness and aggression are unlikely to endear him to the Disy voters neither in towns nor villages.
On the contrary, I suspect most people become a bit afraid when they hear him talk, as he exhibits authoritarian tendencies. It is pity as we would have liked to have a Nicosia voutiropedo – one of our own – defeating the Paphites all the way to the presidential palace.
A FEW DAYS ago, he turned against the party, which he hopes will make him its candidate, likening it to the ‘party of Ceausescu’. He posted the following comment on ‘X’: “After swallowing the blatant blackmail (Averof’s), having tried to impose an omerta on officials and the parliamentary group, as if we are the party of Ceausescu, and they engage from morning till midnight in an election campaign for their chosen man they are ‘devastated’ about unity when historic members of the party take a public position (backing Pamboridis) and ruin their narrative.”
The only person who was ‘devastated,’ to be fair, was party vice president Yiannis Karousos, an Averof fan, who made some stupid comment about the declaration of support for Pamboridis by two so-called ‘historic’ members – Harris Georgiades and former European Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou.
Both are English School graduates, Kyriakidou also a member of Nicosia high society. Their public support, although from the historic ranks of the party, will most certainly not win Pamboridis any votes from the villages, which the villager Averof seems to have in the bag.
FORMER Disy deputy Nicos Tornaritis, another Nicosia butter-boy, but not of English School pedigree, accompanied his lord and master, Prezniktwo, on the trip to Antalya for the Cop31 climate meeting.
Tornaritis, who had been the Prez’s agent in Disy, was rewarded in September by being given the ludicrous title of the president’s special envoy for the Cyprus problem in Asia and Africa. Why he accompanied the Prez to Turkey is unclear, because from what we know climate change has had no impact on how the Cyprob is viewed in Asia and Africa.
We suspect he just went for the ride, as the Prez had chartered a plane and there were free seats. To stop anyone accusing him of being a freeloader, the crafty Tornaritis posted pictures on Facebook of himself shaking hands with men, who looked like they were from Africa and Asia, in the foyer of the conference hall. He was also pictured with two members of the Kenya delegation.
He did not appear to have spoken to people from other continents (no pictures), because he was in Antalya to brief Asians and Africans, about the latest developments in the Cyprob.
HIS BOSS, meanwhile, was looking very pleased with himself, being photographed sitting with foreign minister Constantinos Kombos in the conference room in Antalya with an army officer, in full military regalia and green beret, standing behind them.
This was the head of the presidential guard, who is an officer in the commando regiment. Nik II has a soldier as head of his security detail rather than a cop, probably because he likes to have someone in a commando uniform with him and it helps him promote the tough guy image he lacks.
That he took the commando with him to Turkey and had photographs taken with him inside the conference hall was a cheap publicity stunt, aimed at impressing his subjects back home. Why else take a photo and make it public?
THE SMART-ASS handling of the Cyprob was illustrated in all its glory on Monday at the meeting of the Prez with Tufan Erhurman and the UNSG’s personal envoy Maria Angela Holguin.
Although the meeting was meant to reach agreement on the opening of four crossing points and demining a large part of the buffer zone for the process to be kept alive, Holguin gave the two leaders a 50 per cent discount, and a free pass on the demining. After three and a half hours, they decided to open just two crossings and demining was forgotten.
While Erhurman asked for the opening of the Louroujina-Lymbia crossing, our Prez asked for the opening of a crossing between Karavostasi and Kambos Tsakistra, which would not be used by anyone. More importantly, for the Kambos-Karavostasi crossing point to open construction work would be needed on the long road that has not been used since 1963.
It could take two years for all the required work to be completed in Kambos. But our Prez, resorting to his smart-ass policy, insisted that the two checkpoints would have to be opened at the same time. Agreement may have been reached on Monday, but no crossing will be opening any time soon.
STUNG by the criticism of his smart-assness – not such a tough guy after all – the Prez informed his personal scribe at Phil that the opening of the other two crossing points would be announced at the meeting of the two leaders with the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York, for which no date has been given.
Bimbishis wrote on Saturday that, “according to perfectly informed sources,” the two leaders had decided that the agreement on the other two crossings – Mia Milia and Athienou-Pyroi – would be announced after the meeting with Gutteres. Of course, this “will depend on Ankara’s stance and what instructions it gives Erhurman,” he said.
Our Prez will go to New York praying Ankara will have ordered Erhurman to be as intransigent as possible because let’s face it – despite what he says, he is not keen on a resumption of talks, which would undermine his re-election bid. Bimbishis did not write this – I did.
ELAM, on which the Prez will rely heavily for his re-election, would not be very happy if there was a resumption of the talks. It is also vehemently opposed to the opening of new crossing points, while one of its deputies proposed that the ministry of defence was given a more patriotic name.
Deputy Evgenios Hamboullas, addressing Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas at the House, suggested the ministry was renamed ‘ministry of defence and liberation.’ In his preamble, he said, “Some, using the patriotic realism lollipop, transferred defeatism to society. People must understand the significance of the National Guard.”
The renaming, in Hamboullas’ humble opinion, would boost the morale of society. I think ‘ministry of liberation’ is too defeatist. If we really want to boost public morale and also frighten our enemies it should be called ‘ministry of WAR’.
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