Onasagoras
President Nikos Christodoulides welcomed Olympiacos Piraeus’s basketball team to the Presidential Palace during their visit to Cyprus for an international tournament. “I’m a Gavros, a proud Gavros, and I follow the team,” he declared. Malicious tongues suggested that, had Panathinaikos turned up instead, he might have announced, "I'm a Vazelos, a proud Vazelos.” Olympiacos invited him to the new Peace and Friendship Stadium. We, naturally, invited them to the World Cup we’ll be hosting in Cyprus.
“Honour is priceless, and lucky is the person who has it,” goes the saying. A profound thought: nothing matters more than honor, pride and, of course, prestige. “Do you expect me to go to events and drive round and round looking for parking?” asked our beloved Androulla, the former first lady immortalized by George Vassiliou’s line, “Androulla and I.” She had just been told that her security guard would be cut to save money. Well, what else are we living for if not prestige and a decent parking space?
Plenty of people mocked her complaint. Others thought Fytiris’s sudden decision was excessive, even populist: we’re straining out the gnat while swallowing the camel, they said. Androulla may have been sacrificed to soothe public anger over far worse waste. As my wise grandmother used to say, if you can’t beat the donkey, you beat its saddle.
“Stop going around saying it’s only a matter of time before I end up in prison. If I do, everything you’re afraid of will come out!” That was the postscript to a post by Archimandrite Nektarios addressed to Metropolitan Isaias of Tamasos. The church bells are ringing, and something tells me the second season of the Avvakoum saga will have even more action. Lord, set a guard over my mouth.
The polls on DISY’s internal contest keep coming, and they all point to what everyone already knows: Annita has, by a comfortable margin, the best chance of beating Nikos Christodoulides—or anyone else currently in the frame—in 2028. There is, however, something better than polls if more than one candidate remains: an actual party election. Some are craftily trying to delay it. But if DISY wants to enter the presidential race united, it needs to settle on a candidate as soon as possible. Every day of delay makes the eventual wounds harder to heal.
The first maneuvers for 2028 are underway in DIKO too. Ministers are keen to keep working with Christodoulides—which sounds perfectly understandable to me. The national prince and many around him are cool, if not frozen, on the idea. Others want DIKO to field its own candidate. That may be the safest bet: come the second round, they could become the ultimate kingmakers without hitching themselves to someone who might be knocked out in the first.
Trump has come up with an epic idea: if the Republicans win the coming elections, he says, he’ll give every American a $5,000 dividend. He does not call it buying votes. Brilliant. What do you say, young Nikos? There’s money around, after all. And we’ll save a little more by cutting Androulla’s guard.
The question of investigating the notorious black spy van is back, and I imagine a few people are getting nervous. I should clarify, though, that any resemblance to people or events involving "my" black spy van is purely coincidental. Mine runs on AI technology and is a hybrid, for the sake of the environment.
