Onasagoras
At this time of year, as everyone slowly starts coming back from vacation, our thoughts keep drifting to young Nikos. He skipped the break so he could dig in hard for the next chapter of the Cyprus problem, a chapter some might call pure fantasy. While the rest of us roll home tanned and relaxed from far-off spots and Greek islands, the president looks pale and worn out. He spent all of August locked inside the Presidential Palace, sitting down with DIKO and ELAM, hunting for a way to pick up right where things left off at Crans-Montana and finally land that long-promised bizonal, bicommunal federation. How many sacrifices can one man make for us? And how long are we going to keep kidding ourselves?
Our favorite Foullis skipped the holiday too. He spent the whole summer bouncing from podcast to podcast, taking shots at the petite queen, second-guessing the leadership, and doing the very things he used to call out of bounds when anyone tried them on him. He even sat down with Fidias and made a point of saying he never got word about that much-talked-about DISY poll and never helped write the questionnaire. Right.
The clear hint was that a questionnaire can tilt the answers, so he isn’t buying the outcome. Fidias, to his credit, reminded Foullis that if DISY walks into the elections split, the only real winner is another term for Christodoulides. As my grandmother used to say, you can get the truth from a child or a madman. And from Fidias, I’d add.
Heavy rain left roads underwater, sent the Pedieos River roaring, and dumped wild amounts into the reservoirs. You know the drill: the previous minister gets the credit for the good rain. If Maria Panayiotou had stuck around a little longer, we might actually have fixed the water mess. We’re still the only country that can slap a yellow warning on the same day for both a heatwave and a thunderstorm. One of a kind in every way.
For a place that leans so hard on tourism, and where visitors mainly come for the sea, it’s hard to believe we pull lifeguards off the beaches at 6 p.m. Plenty of people hit the sand right around then, once the heat eases up and daylight still has hours left. If we’re short on lifeguards, the advisory board should just hire more. Who cares if a few of them can’t swim or never even applied? The real question is whether any lifeguards out there can pull us out of the wreck that’s heading our way on the Cyprus problem.
