Onasagoras
Whoa! Looks like this week is ending with plenty of suspense. According to Alpha TV, the Anti-Corruption Authority will soon release a report assigning serious responsibility to a former party leader. Don’t jump to conclusions, though...here’s a little insider info from me: it’s not who you might think, you little rumor mongers. Not N.A., not A.N. But hey, you could always check the betting offices to see what the odds say. Did you place your bets?
I read another piece and nearly fell off my chair. Handcuffs for a 33-year-old woman caught driving drunk. Really? This lady must have fried every last brain cell she had. If she had a shred of cleverness...or even just a hint of cunning...she could have claimed she couldn’t blow into the breathalyzer, or asked to speak with the police chief so she could sober up while waiting and then provide a perfectly clean sample. That simple. But no, apparently, I’m the only one thinking things through in this country of geniuses.
Meanwhile, a short circuit hits the grand, but tragically expensive, undersea interconnection project between Greece and Cyprus. Sure, what could be more typical than a cable shorting out in water? But beyond the jokes, this little hiccup, combined with some, shall we say, amateurish handling, threatens to create a rift between the two governments. It’s already sparked a behind-the-scenes clash between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy, though neither will admit it publicly.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is now investigating yet another big Cypriot project...hardly something to boast about. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day. Some claim the rumored cable scandal is meant to distract from the mess at the Vasiliko project. Others, slightly more “sophisticated” conspiracists, think the opposite: that the Vasiliko scandal is being used to soften the blow for the cable mess. Either way, we’re tangled up in scandals. Spray, wipe, scandalize, done.
The outrageously budgeted undersea cable project, with no ceiling on final costs, and the endless farce of the Vasiliko terminal share a lot in common (like random initial agreements or contracts tailored for “certain unnamed insiders”), but there’s one key difference: in the first case, most suspects aren’t Cypriot, while in the second, names and faces are unmistakably local. Let’s see who ends up in the pit they dug for others, and whether anyone ever recovers the millions lost in bottomless holes.
In any case, if summer was hot, expect autumn to hit red-alert levels. We now have two multi-billion-euro projects in the headlines that, instead of solving our energy problems, are providing endless fodder for journalists and causing mini brain-fail moments for exhausted consumers, who, as always, will foot the bill despite doing nothing wrong. Their one fatal mistake? Being born in the wrong place.
*This article was translated from its Greek original
